Thirteen participants from BWI affiliates in East Africa sub region met in Nairobi on the 5th to 7th November, 2014 to carry out an evaluation of LO-Norway project as well as deliberate on vocational training and technical education in the construction sector.
The project titled « scaling up gender fair structures and policies in BWI sectors in East Africa – targeting infrastructure projects and organizing Multinational Companies » has been implemented by five building and construction unions affiliates of BWI in the sub region.
The workshop objectives were to assess the project achievement and challenges, share experiences, recruitment and organizing strategies and the essence of vocational training to achieve decent work and building skills at work.
All participants to the workshop have shown that the project was indeed a success as the objectives were well achieved despite normal challenges they faced in organizing and recruitment. However they embraced the whole project and even the concept of vocational training and technical education which has been a challenge in the sector that is viewed to be informal. The main challenge was gender involvement in the training where in all the participating unions many women are not involved in the building and construction sector.
One of the main issues raised during the workshop was the violation of workers’ rights by Chinese MNCs. Therefore, the affiliates pin the hopes on BWI in helping them deal with the issue of Chinese
The workshop was conducted by BWI Regional Project Coordinator Garikanai Shoko and BWI East Africa Project Coordinator Kivale Ali Said while participants were Project Coordinators and Educators from Kenya Building, UNRISK, Uganda Building, TAMICO and Ethiopia affiliates who were part of this project from 2012 – 2014.