Employers watchdog marks 50 years
By Thomas Pere
IT was all joy as the Federation of Uganda Employers (FUE), celebrated their Golden Jubilee last Friday.Rose Ssenabulya, the executive director of FUE, says it was established in 1958 and registered under the Trustee’s Incorporation Act in 1960.
It has since grown from strength to strength, serving Uganda’s business sector in the areas of advocacy, human resource management and industrial relations, representation and business development, with the support of its valued membership.
She says celebrations started in February with a number of activities and events which ended on Friday. They included hosting of the East, Central and Southern African Employers Organisations Conference held from February 25 to 26 this year at Kampala Serena Hotel.
The conference whose theme was “Regional integration – the critical condition for enterprise development,” was to enable organisations manage and help their members overcome economic challenges, propose possible strategies and approaches for raising enterprise competitiveness in difficult times. It was also to share experiences on how organisations and their members could benefit from regional integration.
The conference brought together presidents and chairpersons, board members and chief executive officers of employers organisations from East, Central and Southern Africa, representatives of enterprises and companies, international and regional trade organisations.
The experts were drawn from international consultancies, the IOE, International Labour Organisation, Ministry of East African Affairs, European Union, COMESA, SADC, EABC and PEC. They presented their views, experiences and cases, including country specific papers where cases from selected enterprises in the region were also presented.
The participants were given a deeper understanding of how to harness benefits and contribute to regional integration. They were also enlightened on the need to appreciate the role to be played in fostering enterprise competitiveness with a common position on issues affecting employers in ECSA discussed at the ILO Conference in June this year.
Launching of the FUE Women Executives Chapter on March 5, at Kampala Serena Hotel was another event. This was to help women take up more higher executive positions which at the moment are very few.
Another event was the launching of the UN Global Compact Local Network (UNGC) on July 27. UNGC is a strategic policy initiative for business firms committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principals in the areas of human rights, labour standards, environment and anti-corruption, taken from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO declaration on decent work, the Rio declaration on environment and the UN convention on corruption.
The week of August 9-13 was the climax of the celebrations. Trees were planted on a one-acre piece of land at Nove, Kakiri in Wakiso district on August 11. Over 100 people participated including the staff of FUE and member organisations like Mildmay, Multitech, Save the Children, NSSF among others. National Forest Authority provided the seedlings and technical advice.
On Friday a ground-breaking ceremony was done for the FUE home at Kiwanga near Namanve industrial park in Mukono district. On the site, will be an administrative block to cost sh1.2b. Construction of the building which will house the FUE offices will be completed by August next year. This will be followed by a training complex to cost sh750m and finally a rental complex to cost sh2.5b.
The eight month long celebrations’ ended with a fund-raising dinner on Friday.
