Free legal aid service protects factory workers’ rights in Hawassa, Ethiopia

Hawassa, Ethiopia (ILO News) - ILO supported free legal aid centre protects Garment and Textile factory workers from abuse in Hawassa Industrial Park, Ethiopia. The free legal aid service centre, supported by the ILO Siraye programme is also benefiting Hawassa University law students with hands-on experiences through moot-court competitions.

Misganaw Temesgien, is a Paralegal at Hawassa Legal Aid service and 5th Year law Student Hawassa University. He said, “the centre is protecting factory workers from abuse, by increasing their bargaining power through legal advisory services.”

“We have three project offices in Hawassa. At this office we give free legal aid services around labour disputes mainly for HIP workers in collaboration with basic trade unions in the park,” added Misganaw.

The project gives free services ranging from advisory services to court trials.

Misganaw said, “With advisory services we inform them of their rights and responsibilities. When we do negotiations, we make sure they are not abused, increasing their bargaining power in the legal framework. And when required we represent them in court trials as we have a legally registered attorney at law.”

“For instance, recently 14 workers were illegally suspended from work at a Garment factory in HIP and before the issue went to the court, we embarked on advisory and negotiations with the employers. Finally, we were able to reach on a consensus and a payment of about 2 million ETB was made to the workers.”

“Beside labour disputes, we also provide support for family disputes and resolved them. For instance, we had supported a women with a divorce case. Initially, she was left without anything but with the burden of raising the child alone as a single mother. With our support, she now gets child subsistence every month. We also participate in moot court competitions and developed out skills in practical settings which will help us in the future as we plan to get into the world of work,” said Misganaw.

Another paralegal at Hawassa Legal Aid service, Meron Deribe is also a Hawassa university 5th Year Student. She said she has been supporting workers with advisory services and preparations of all documents necessary to initiate charges in court.

“By participating in this project, I have got practical lessons beyond the theoretical lesson we get in the university. This is beneficial for us because the exposure gives us concrete skills as opposed to the theoretical lessons which can be forgotten easily. It has built up my confidence as well,” Meron reckons.

According to Yirgalem Girma, Director of the Free Legal Aid Centre and Lecturer at Hawassa University School of Law, the University started free legal aid service 13 years ago with an aim to support people who couldn’t afford to hire attorneys and legal advisors for their cases.

“We provide free advisory services, preparations of charges and representation before the court of law. We started working with ILO Siraye program two years ago with major focus on protecting workers’ rights at the garment factories in and outside HIP.”

This collaboration with Siraye Programme is not just for legal aid service provisions only but also covers a wide range of activities. It covers legal and labour right related trainings for students, university lecturers, trade unions and workers and other stakeholders like gender offices and labour and skills offices. Besides, it works on gender equality and the prevention of gender-based violence (GBV).

“We have trained Police officers in Hawassa so that when GBV happen it will be possible for them to properly serve victims and bring the perpetrators before law,” said Yirgalem.

He added, “We have also supported a girl students club in Hawassa University and launched a campaign around works rights, women’s right and gender equality.

According to Yirgalem, through the Siraye Programme collaboration an ILO moot-court competition was launched. The competition that was conducted for two years, helped law students to research in depth Labour issues and experience practice what they studied in theoretical classrooms in regard to court proceedings.

Not only the students, but also the community also learn the legal frameworks, Dispute settlement mechanisms, rights and responsibilities related to labour issues from these competitions as it was also broadcasted to the public.

‘The major thing we do with ILO is the legal aid service we are providing to people who need it. With this service, we have reached more than 1500 people so far. This was particularly very important for workers who are illegally suspended from their jobs as it is not usually affordable for them to manage this and take their cases to court,” stressed Yirgalem.

“With the support from ILO Siraye, we now have three legal aid centres in Hawassa to be accessible to workers in the industrial park, and one center in near the court as well. We are working on sustaining the centre even when the ILO support is not with us,” he added.

Labor issues usually concern three parties. It is an issue of the employer and the government in addition to the workers. Putting this into consideration, we have embarked on capacity development and awareness raising around labour rights among all these parties. HIP used to be closed to external actors like us event not accessible to labour inspectors. With awareness raising activities around rights, they eventually started opening their gates to inspectors, researchers, and other stakeholders.

Nowadays, many of the employers are open to collective bargaining and collective agreements as they tend to understand their rights and the rights of the workers. They have started to allocate appropriate working hours and properly calculated pays for time spent at workplaces.

Yirgalem said, “there was a tendency to suspend workers without the right compensation as workers are also not aware of their labour rights. Now workers are aware of their rights and our legal aid is accessible to them so they now can get the necessary legal aid services to protect their rights. This has resulted in a deterrence effect now stopping employers from arbitrarily suspending workers from their jobs.”

According to the testimony of Endale Teshome, Worker at HIP and a beneficiary of the free legal aid service, Endale and his friends were illegally suspended from their jobs for more than three months and they would have just gone home empty handed if it’s not for the centre, that is providing legal aid service for them.

Endale said, “We have received legal advisory services, and the centre will also represent us in court as we can’t afford to hire an attorney by ourselves.

“If it wasn’t for the centre, we would just go home losing our jobs as we do not have the awareness about our rights and how to defend ourselves even though we know we were suspended unfairly so we are really grateful for the service they are providing us with.”