Factory Service Update
- August 2021: The Better Work Team is continuing to conduct onsite visits to factories according to the UN COVID travel guidelines. Factories in the Tigray REgion are closed due to the ongoing conflict.
- July 2021: All 42 Better Work Ethiopia-registered factories are operational.
- Health, maintenance and sanitation workers have been trained in sanitation and disinfection skills to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
- Since May 2020, the programme has re-designed different training topics to fit into virtual sessions. New trainings have been designed and delivered on Covid-19 OSH mitigation, Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and recovery, grievance handling, sexual harassment, and labour inspections to help enterprises and the government to prevent and cope with COVID-19.
- In addition, legal briefs on frequently asked questions on implementation of the labour law in view of Covid-19 and suspension and reduction of the work force have been shared with partners.
- Seven rounds of virtual training sessions on Covid-19 awareness and financial literacy have been delivered to factories at Bole Lemi and Hawassa Industry Park and local factories working in Addis Ababa and Adama city. A total of 117 participants attended these trainings.
Additional Better Work Activities
- Community outreach has been conducted through print and mass media, virtual and awareness-raising videos and trainings, signage and brochures.
- The Better Work Ethiopia programme, in consultation with key partners, has produced educational materials in the form of videos and audio to provide comprehensive information about COVID-19 to workers and managers. These materials prepared in Amharic are four-part and address critical issues and questions by workers about the pandemic. In addition to these, Better Work has facilitated Q&A discussions with medical professionals and shared testimonial videos of COVID-19 patients to recognize important lessons learned about prevention and quarantine.
- The programme “Covid-19 Disinfection Training” was designed and conducted for 14 factories in Bole Lemi and Hawassa Industrial Parks. The training capacitated 86 disinfecting teams on practical cleaning and disinfection skills for Covid-19. The training was conducted with the approach of on-the-job training at the premises of the two parks. A total of 331,494 Meter Square size of production floors were disinfected in the two parks.