Aggrieved fishermen have petitioned all High Court Judges and the Judicial Service Commission in a case in which they claim to have been injured by a ruling that shifted their labour case from the labour commission to the High Court.
The fishermen went on a legal strike on 26 October 2015 against what they have called “barbaric conditions” they were compelled to work under (such as twenty -one to thirty-six-hour shifts without rest and sleep), the non-payment of overtime worked and the non-payment of their shift allowances.
According to their representative and director of the Workers Advice Centre, Mathew Lungameni, they were dismissed en masse despite being allowed by Law to remain on strike until Health and Safety conditions were brought to legal standards by the companies.
Lungameni has said, “The overseer of the Labour Law at sea was the government but despite numerous requests to the relevant authorities including the Ministry of Labour and the Office of the President they refused to enforce the law.”
He said, for the past four years the fishermen in vain tried to apply to the Labour Tribunal of the Labour Commissioner to resolve their grievances.
He added that they were denied the right to apply to a competent Tribunal/Court.
“The reason for this was that government officials including from the Ministry of Labour had shares in fishing companies,” he said in his petition to the judges.
The fishermen then brought the matter to the Labour Court and Mr Justice Hosea Angula is said to have taken the case into the High Court which according to the fishermen, had no jurisdiction to hear the matter.
Lungameni said that this meant that the fishermen were denied the right to bring their grievances to a competent Court of Law.
He added that “What was more; Mr Justice Angula is a director of the fishing company Oceanica with a direct interest in the repression of fishermen’s demands for civilized labour conditions in terms of the law.”
The fishermen have thus addressed the matter to all High Court Judges and the Judicial Service Commission to request from them to say whether they associate themselves with what the fisherman have termed the “nullification of the Law and the role of the Courts in upholding the law”.
Grievances
The fishermen have expressed several grievances.
They have said that since the strike, fishermen who could not take care of their families due to the loss of work have died from stress-related illnesses, trauma and suicides.
They also claim that many of them have been driven into squalor.
The fishermen claim to have now exhausted all attempts to exercise their legal rights in Court and for this reason, have also directed their petition to the International Labour Organization (ILO) and human rights organizations internationally.