A meeting on decent work conditions in Africa will end today in Yaounde with experts from several countries in the continent having brainstormed on home to make the situation of workers better. That means the populations should have jobs in the first place. The Yaounde gathering, which is the second such assembly holding under the aegis of the Labour and Social Affairs Commission of the African Union, the first having taken place in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 2009.

With an agenda adopted in April 2007 that earmarked 2007-2015 as a period to ensure decent work on the continent, the perception is that decision-makers in Africa are not only conscious of the poor living conditions of their peoples, but also thin k that it is time to make those who work do so under good conditions.

With the impressive involvement of the African Development Bank, the United Nations Organisation, the African Union, the International Labour Organisation and the International Organisation of Workers among others indications are that the initiative is being taken seriously at a macro level. That is, national and international bodies are keen on seeing that those who work do so decently. Several possibilities and mechanisms have been identified that can combine to improve working conditions, reduce poverty and give workers a more acceptable environment at their work places.

However, the crucial question of the growing army of the unemployed has often worked to the advantage of employers who either pay chicken feed for endless number of working hours, higher and fire staff at will or simply give priority to profit to the detriment of the working conditions. Moreover, those who fail to get employment in the formal sector end up in the informal irking for a living in the dungeons irrespective of the health risk involved. Social protection for such a category of worker, if they can be called that way becomes a herculean task.

Moreover, although land, labour and capital have often been identified as being at the centred of economic production, whenever crisis erupt the tendency if to downsize manpower, reduce salaries among other expenses. Such a quick solution and other managerial decisions that give little consideration to the human factor in most business corporations have often been at the root cause of indecent working conditions.

That is why the appeal by Prime Minister Philemon Yang on Wednesday at the opening of the Yaounde seminar on the need to humanise working conditions could easily be understood. Otherwise, in a world where globalisation has happened as a double-egged sword, transforming life into a fast moving train, many could remain in the gruesome corners of societies.