AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE business community and the government have been urged to work together to provide access to an effective remedy for the victims of human rights abuses in their workplaces.
The call was made by the Chairperson of the Commission for Human Rights and Good Governance (CHRAGG), retired Judge Mathew Mwaimu.
“I urge everybody not to ignore the national framework on business and human rights. We should learn from what transnational corporations have done in the past in Tanzania and abroad as the country is undergoing economic transformation,” he said.
He was speaking in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday during the closing of the fourth multi-stakeholders conference on business and human rights in Tanzania.
Justice Mwaimu assured the stakeholders that CHRAGG was committed to promote and protect human rights, arising out of violations from activities conducted by various different business enterprises.
“The commission will cordially work with the government, civil society organisations, the business community and the public in general, to strengthen mechanism to enable members of the public and CSOs to report business related human rights violation incidences to relevant institutions” he said.
To achieve this role, Justice Mwaimu said that in the past three years, his commission has introduced an online based Complaints Management Information Systems (CMIS).
He elaborated that such a system will enable CHRAGG staff and members of the public to access websites, mobile apps and short messages in logging and addressing complaints.
“CMIS will provide interface for lodging and tracking complaints from a remote location without necessarily taking trouble to travel or use postage costs,” he insisted
Some common rising business human right complaints according to him include those of in appropriate acquisition of land, discharging improperly releasing of toxic chemicals and violation of workers’ rights.
Wilbert Mahunde, a stakeholder from Songea District in Ruvuma Region, highlighted difficulty people are going through after they were told not to develop their areas for they would be compensated for the prospective uranium mine.
Mahunde said that nothing is going on eight years later, where people cannot repair their houses and no money has been paid for them to develop new residency elsewhere.
He insisted that peoples’ rights must be observed, which includes compensation in investment projects as a way of avoiding conflicts and promoting sustainable development as a country gears to industrial economy
