Workers dying at Chinese sites rise

Problems at other Chinese sites

The incident also sparked an investigation, which unleashed other serious claims. One of them is that despite the high number of accidents and fatalities, clinical services are unstable at Karuma site, although it is the biggest construction site in Uganda.

At the beginning of October, for instance, there was no experienced doctor at the clinic apart from the Chinese doctor, who works as an administrator and does not treat Ugandans. Of the three Ugandan doctors that had been there, one’s contract had expired and he wasn’t there. The other had just resigned and the third was on leave.

Stakes are higher because at Karuma alone, there are over 5000 workers. When in November, The Independent talked to Harrison Mutikanga, the UEGCL boss, he expressed concerns that the deaths already recorded at Karuma were unusually higher than those recorded in similar projects. But he was also optimistic.

“But we are engaging the contractor,” Mutikanga said, “The new leadership is serious about getting the contractor to have all these problems solved.”

Mutikanga was referring to the new Project Steering Committee (PSC). Headed by Eng. Badru Kiggundu, the new PSC was appointed by President Yoweri Museveni to address problems surrounding the construction of both the 600 MW Karuma and the 183 MW Isimba hydropower dam. Both dams are estimated to cost well over $2 billion.

Poor Health and Safety conditions is one of the challenges they are supposed to address.

However, the evidence collected by The Independent reveals that the team has a tough job ahead of it. And Sinohydro is not the only problem over these issues.

The health and safety breaches could have far reaching implications on the successful completion of the dams. The World Bank recently suspended loans to Uganda worth trillions of dollars this year over cases of child sexual abuse, sexual harassment of female employees, inadequate resettlement practices and negative construction impacts under Chinese contractors.

As such, Karuma is not the only Chinese project with a poor health and safety record. At its sister plant, Isimba, workers went on strike twice in 2015 over pay and working conditions.

The Kilembe Copper Mines project in Kasese which is also under another Chinese company, Tibet Hima Mining Company, was shut down in 2015 following two fatal accidents. It is the biggest mining project in Uganda.

On December 15, 2015, Enos Rusunzu, a 21-year old youth, was crushed to death by a conveyer belt on a copper mill machine. Apparently, the over-sized jacket he was wearing got entangled in the rotating drum of the Conveyor and he was pulled and crashed head first into the conveyor system. The machine sucked his head into its system causing fatal damage to his skull and brain.

Rusunzu’s death came two weeks after an underground copper carrier got derailed and crashed another worker Zimonia Kalisya’s leading to his death. Apparently, Kalisya had only been on the job for one month and he was undergoing on-job training on how to operate a copper mill machine.

Increasingly, from roads to major dams and big mining projects, the Chinese is the reigning contractor in Uganda and most of Africa. The surge of the Chinese contractors is being driven by the readiness of China’s Exim Bank to extend what African leaders see as “cheap and unconditional” development finance for implementation of mostly natural resources exploitation and infrastructure construction projects.

Previously, these projects went to western companies and others that emerged best bidders and were ready to meet the conditions of especially western lenders like the World Bank. Most critical of these conditions is respect for human and labour rights.

Whether Chinese or British, to get the contract financed by a western lender, the company needs to emerge the best bidder and to do so, it has to ensure that away from promising quality work and at the most competitive price, it has to ensure the right working conditions observers say. Breach of these conditions strictly leads to cancellation of the contract. All this no longer matters according to critics.

Desperate for money to implement infrastructure projects, Uganda like many other developing countries, is awarding contracts not to the best bidder but to the Chinese company with (sometimes) the most connected commission agent and a ready Chinese financial backer—usually China’s Exim bank.

All the Chinese ask in exchange for their money, insiders say, is for the contract to be awarded to a Chinese company.

Matters are not helped by the secrecy under Chinese companies. Revealing these excesses to authorities or the public is punished heavily. For instance, some workers Tibet Hima, were sacked for allegedly speaking to the media about the safety of their lives following the death of two colleagues.

A worker at the Tian Tang Group steel facility in Mukono, near Kampala, was early this year fired for revealing excesses of his employers to State Minister for Labour, Employment and Industrial Relations, Herbert Kabafunzaki.

National Organisation of Trade Unions (NOTU), Chairman General, Wilson Owere told The Independent that concerns about Chinese employers have been brought to the body.

“We have a serious problem with these Chinese firms and we have written to the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development and to the Chinese embassy,” Owere told The Independent, “We have been trying to get an agreement with some of these Chinese but they keep dodging. They don’t want their workers to join the union.”

Workers’ legislator, Sam Lyomoki, says efforts are being made to address these problems.

“We started with putting in place a strong law that details mechanisms on how to prevent those occurrences in the first place,” he told The Independent, “But what you have is a glaring poor implementation and enforcement of the law.”

He added; “You have a skeletal workforce, we should be having committees and inspectors that ensure prevention mechanisms are in place in work places because these situations in work places can be disastrous for the entire public especially matters to do with environmental degradation, water and air pollution.”

He also noted that while under workers’ rights are a constitutional matter, political will in terms of labour rights is not there.

“Here workers do not matter,” he said.

For Minister Kabafunzaki, who hit the ground running hunting down employers that abuse workers’ rights once he was appointed, the situation is getting better.

“In the past things were worse,” he told The Independent, “these Chinese didn’t care at all but now they are beginning to respond, the other day CCCC invited me to witness the protective gear they had brought in.”

He explained that the enforcement was a bit weak but that renewed efforts such as his—he has so far visited 146 factories—things are improving.

“This improvement can only be gradual,” he added, “in a year the situation will be completely different.”

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editor@independent.co.ug