In the new Social Security Code, emigrants will be able to receive a pension upon retirement. The announcement is from Abass Fall, Minister of Labor, Employment and Relations with Institutions, who informs that his services are finalizing the implementing decrees of the new Labor Code and Social Security Code. Ipres-Social Security Fund merger, Social Stability Pact, Saes strike, Emedia affair, crisis at La Poste… Abass Fall, appointed around forty days ago, reveals his convictions in this interview.
Where are you with the proposed merger of the Pension Institute for Retirees of Senegal (Ipres) and the Social Security Fund?
This is a project that I found on site. There is a great reflection that I found there. It’s not easy, but it’s a matter that is being handled at the ministry level. There are a lot of issues surrounding this question. There are personal interests, employers, unions. These are questions of positioning and power that must be managed.
Are the new Labor Code and Social Security Code ready?
It’s in the circuit. Our services are currently working on the implementing decrees. This year, there will be a new Labor Code and the Safety Code will be much more extensible. It will take into account several reforms of Ipres and the Social Security Fund. There are a lot of innovations and workers will be much more secure in terms of the Social Security Code. The retirement pension will be extended to emigrants. Many emigrants worked and were not lucky enough to have a retirement pension. Now, Senegalese who work elsewhere can recover their pensions here in Senegal.
What are you going to do to provide solutions to the crisis facing the Emedia invest press group?
I asked the General Directorate of Labor and Social Security to give me a report on Emedia but not only there, wherever there are problems. The problem in our businesses is sustainability. We create businesses without having the real data, especially on the economic level. We create to create. I don’t know under what conditions Emedia was created, but I believe that there are problems with the economic viability of the project. I don’t know what happened, but some people link it to the departure of the old regime. I don’t believe it. If this is the case, many projects are doomed to failure. We cannot depend on a State when we do private business. If this is the case, the State is obliged to guide the editorial line. So, I do not believe in this thesis for the Emedia situation. The government is interested in the Emedia case, but also in other cases.
What about Sn La Poste workers?
La Poste is a company that finds itself with triple its capacity. This is not sustainable. For this La Poste issue, the State must take its responsibilities.
In what way? We must clean up La Poste, which cannot continue to live on a drip. 3 billion salary is incredible for La Poste which has not positioned itself in relation to changes in the environment. This company must reposition itself and have other products that adapt to economic and technological development. If La Poste were monitoring, we would not have reached this situation. There is technological, demographic and human resources monitoring. The State can no longer continue to pay the salaries of a company which should have been autonomous. What is happening at La Poste is a legacy of the poor governance of the old regime.
What are the axes of the new Social Stability Pact?
-During the last meeting of the Council of Ministers, the President of the Republic asked that we work on a new Social Stability Pact. This pact should no longer be seen as a form of coaxing or calming the unions. As a reminder, the most representative unions receive 300 million FCfa in state subsidies. It was to help unions deal with certain situations. But I think we have to go beyond that. We plan to meet the unions to discuss the new contours of the Social Stability Pact. Unions, employers and the State must sit down to discuss the current situation in the country and ensure that this pact can continue.
The Autonomous Union of Higher Education Teachers (Saes) begins a strike starting this Monday (the day before yesterday) for 2 days. Can we say that things are off to a bad start for you?
No. The Saes announces a strike and we are in the process of seeing what to do. I find that our States often sign to calm people down. It’s not good. The parties must sit down transparently, talk to each other and make realistic and achievable commitments. But it is a real problem in our administrations. We found extremely complicated situations because the old regime had signed just to calm the unions. This is why the State could pay for 2 or 3 months and then suddenly everything collapsed. We can’t continue like this. The situation in the country forces people to talk to each other as patriots, not in the political sense of the term, but simply among Senegalese people. We call on the Saes to lift the slogan and sit down around a table to discuss. We cannot go back on certain commitments because the State is a continuity. But we need to see how to implement all of this with clear and precise deadlines on which we can agree. I am working with the Minister of Higher Education to restore calm. For some time now, there have been layoffs, particularly at the Autonomous Port of Dakar. How does the Minister of Employment analyze these job losses? We need to clean up. I told you about what is happening at La Poste. There are political recruitments, people recruited, but who don’t even come to work.
At home, with the State-employers agreement, we found an incredible situation. There are more than 200 people who we don’t even recognize. There are people who were not even aware that they were receiving money. We call the person and they say they never received money even though the money was sent. Companies that were eligible in the so-called State-Employers agreement and they say they were never eligible. These are incredible things. The Port CEO denied the information that said so many people had been fired. But there are people whose contracts have expired and we could not renew them.
Having reached a certain level, you must separate yourself from those who are not useful to the company while respecting labor laws. You also need support. For me, we must return to this system of voluntary departure until companies can have the opportunity to recruit. We hope that 2025 will be the year of workers and we will tackle the issue of employment. But I recognize that it is difficult. I can tell you that as Minister of Labor, my vehicle broke down and I found it on site. Sometimes I take it and a few km later, it breaks down again. I have to use another one which is not practical.
This is to tell you that the situation is complicated for everyone while at the ministry level we do not have the possibility of purchasing vehicles. Why does the State allow companies to do this if they do not pay back the social security contributions taken from workers’ salaries? That’s a good question and a real problem. We can say that we do not have enough staff to control businesses. I was talking with a labor inspector who told me he had inspected 1,000 companies in Dakar, people congratulate him even though it’s nothing. There are 5,000 to 6,000 companies to control in Dakar. This is why we are considering increasing labor inspections in certain departments. What we have as labor inspectors in Dakar, an inspection, is insufficient.
We need to strengthen labor inspectors and controllers so that they can do the job properly. There is also the employee’s right to information. This is a project that we are going to tackle. If someone works somewhere, we must have an information system which allows them, each time they click on their profile, to have all the information concerning the payments made by the employer. This will allow the worker to make projections and will have clear visibility on their social security contributions. It is the right to information which has still not been voted on in the National Assembly. This is what will allow us to set up information systems and impose them on companies so that each employee can, in real time, have the level of their contributions. The State does not necessarily have all the levers to control. The level of recruitment of labor inspectors is slow and not proportional to the development of the economic environment made up of diverse companies. There is laxity somewhere, it must be said.
Corruption is still there. Employers sometimes have the means to circumvent the laws by having accomplices everywhere. But we must put in place the means to ensure that administration agents are less exposed to corruption. An employee who receives 200,000 FCFA cannot control someone who, in terms of commitment, must pay 50 million FCFA.
Interview conducted by Babacar Guèye DIOP (text) & Moussa SOW (photo)
