More than 17 million meticais is the amount that the General Inspection of Labor (IGT) recovered, last year, from companies and individuals with debts to the National Institute of Social Security (INSS) in Gaza province.

The total debt to the INSS, in 2021, stood at 63.3 million meticais, resulting from 43.3 million carried over from previous years and a further 20 million from the 2021 fiscal year. The IGT, the entity responsible for the collection of debts to the INSS, made it known that of the total amount collected from 765 debtors, about 15 million were returned voluntarily, and the remaining 2.5 million were recovered through the courts.

Speaking last week to Jornal Notícias, the IGT provincial delegate in Gaza, Sergio Chirindza, said that the recovery is the result of "hard work", in coordination with the INSS, aimed at convincing debtor companies to fulfill their social security obligations.

Detected around 1400 labor infractions

Chirindza also pointed to the registration of five accidents at work that resulted in one death. He revealed that the IGT detected about 1400 labor infractions, involving foreign citizens working illegally in the province, salaries below the national minimum, omission of the number of workers, in addition to the lack of hygiene and safety equipment for workers.

The provincial delegate also referred that the city of Xai-Xai, the districts of Chókwè, Chibuto, Bilene and Mandlakazi are the ones with the most infractions, especially with regard to compliance with labour legality, in particular mandatory social security and the existence of foreigners working illegally in the province.

However, he said that the path has always been that of common sense. "To about 80% of infractions we passed warnings and pedagogical measures and the rest, given their gravity, went on to judicial resolution," he revealed, stressing that "our intention is not to harm private companies, but we also don't want the labor mass and the State to be harmed, so, depending on the complexity of the problem, we favor sensitizing the parties to comply with their obligations."

Last year, the IGT conducted 813 inspections, exceeding its initial projections set at 750 actions.