The International Labour Organisation (ILO) yesterday disclosed that Rwanda has so far endorsed eight main key conventions on labour.

The ILO representative, Dia Ben Saidd, said this during a meeting organised by Cotraf, a local trade union.

The meeting attracted over 50 stakeholders including representatives from trade unions, government, employees and employers.

Among the conventions Rwanda has ratified include those concerning forced labour, equality in disbursing remuneration, freedom of association, collective bargaining and the worst form of child labour, among others.

According to Saidd, Rwanda has ratified the most significant conventions.

"The fundamental conventions have been ratified, we now want to see them practically being applied. ILO has also sent 11 reports regarding the conventions to government but so far they have responded to six of them and we are waiting for responses concerning the other five,” said Saidd.

He added that the meeting provided a good platform to interact with different people to identify employees’ problems and the way forward.

He added that the major focus of the meeting was convention 87 regarding freedom of association and 98 concerning collective bargaining.

The Secretary General of Cotraf, Alex Rusine, noted that Rwanda has only 30 labour inspectors who are insufficient to monitor the whole country.

"We have very few labour inspectors but we are advocating for an increase so that employees’ welfare all over the country is monitored.

We have received very many complaints from workers whose rights have been violated but at times, we can’t help or identify all of them because of few inspectors,” added Rusine.

Chizzah Consolee, a legal advisor at Adma International Limited said that dialogue should be held more often to discuss issues faced by both parties and improve negotiations between employees and employers.

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