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  • Essay / Problems faced by casual workers in Meru town: an online intervention

    The results of this research proposal will help develop a platform where casual workers in Meru City can easily find employment. They will be able to find work for a day or two without having to show up on construction sites every morning to ask to be hired. The research findings will go a long way in strengthening the rapidly growing informal sector which is proving to be one of the strong pillars of the Kenyan economy. This project proposal focuses on the casual worker, particularly the day laborer who is hired and paid on a daily basis, without any promise of additional work in the future. Day laborers are part of the informal sector of the economy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The typical casual worker of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the dockworker. Other major industries that relied on casual labor were construction, logging, sawmills, and agriculture. Currently, job seekers must go to workplaces to be hired. There is, however, no guarantee that one will be hired on any given day. Managers can hire and fire workers as they please since there is no interest group in power representing workers. The IT solution is a web-based system called RIZIKI. The system notifies users of available jobs. Job seekers must create a RIZIKI account which will allow them to apply for these positions. Since most workers in the informal sector have not completed the full formal education system, no CV will be needed to match applications with jobs. Instead, a reference system will be used. A worker's referee is his former employer who gives his opinion on him and increases his chances of being hired. Casual work, also called casual work, is a form of non-permanent employment relationship. These jobs have limited job security and are not considered a career or part of a career. (Contingent and Alternative Conditions of Employment, 2005). Casual work includes all casual work. Manual labor is physical work done by people, as opposed to that done by machines. Many jobs involving manual labor, such as manual material handling or manual assembly of parts, can be performed by unskilled or semi-skilled workers. For a variety of reasons, there is a correlation between manual labor and unskilled or semi-skilled workers, despite the fact that almost any job can potentially use skill and intelligence. Organizations hire contingent workers because they see an opportunity to reduce benefits and retirement costs. It allows labor costs to be adjusted based on the type of expertise and labor needed and when they are needed. The type of work in the informal economy takes different forms, notably in terms of capital invested, technology used and income generated. (The informal economy: Department of Infrastructure and Economic Cooperation, 2011) The informal sector includes activities such as those carried out by casual warehouse workers and daily wage construction workers. These activities provide crucial economic opportunities for the lower classes of thesociety and have experienced rapid expansion since the 1960s. (Women and men in the informal economy, 2002). The informal sector excludes all activities of the criminal economy. The informal economy is part of the market economy because it produces goods and services for sale and profit. Unpaid domestic work and care activities are not part of the informal economy because they do not contribute to it. Most workers in the informal economy do not have access to secure employment, benefits or representation. These characteristics differ from the formal sector where there are regular opening hours and a regular location. In the formal sector, workers have access to benefits such as sick leave, insurance and pension. According to development and transition theories, workers in the informal sector earn less money, have unstable incomes and do not have access to basic protection and services. The informal sector is the part of the economy that is not taxed and is not included in gross income. National Product (GNP) of a country. Unlike the formal sector, activities carried out in the informal sector are not controlled by the government. (The informal economy: Department of Infrastructure and Economic Cooperation, 2011). The informal sector has several characteristics: easy access, where anyone wishing to enter can find work and earn money, unstable employer-employee relations (Meier, Gerald M., 2005), a reduced scope of activity and skills acquired in the informal sector. education. Day laborers, who are the subject of this study, find work through three common routes: First, some employment agencies specialize in very short-term contracts for manual labor, most often in construction, factories , offices and manufacturing industry. These companies typically have offices where workers can arrive and be assigned to on-site work, depending on their availability. Second, a manager looking for additional labor to respond to an unexpected change in his plans must find the necessary amount of labor with the appropriate skills. Third, and less formally, workers gather in well-known locations, usually on a public street corner or in commercial parking lots, and wait for construction contractors, landscapers, homeowners, and small business owners to companies, as well as other potential employers, offer them work. Much of this work involves building small residences or landscaping. These three paths are not entirely favorable to both employers and workers. In Kenya, workers use the technique of waiting for the employer to get a job for the day. Locations are common job sites such as warehouses, shops dealing with heavy metal moving such as hardware stores, and construction sites. Job seekers gather at the door or entrance of the entity before business hours where employers meet them and hire based on the amount of labor they need for the day and skills that meet their needs. Once the employer is satisfied with the number of workers he has hired, the hiring process is closed until the next day. The others must turn back and look for work elsewhere. This is a relatively calm scenario, which can become chaotic when these parties do not agree, particularly when the employer dismisses some of the job seekers on its premises. InIn certain situations, employers become arrogant and abusive towards job seekers. Ideally, a casual worker wishing to be hired on a daily basis should easily find a suitable job with any employer. However, as things stand, finding work is a tedious task as it involves going to physical workplaces to ask to be hired and to be paid at the end of the day. Hiring depends largely on the amount of work required by an employer that day. A successful job search results in a daily wage for the worker. Although this may seem like the end of the struggle, this is rarely the case, as work is only offered for twenty-four hours at a time, meaning one must start the process from the beginning. Introducing an online system to help people find casual employment would go a long way to alleviating these problems. The system will provide a list of available jobs and allow interested parties to apply for rapid placement in these jobs. This will also help the worker get a job for the next day. Assumption. 1. The platform will help casual job seekers to get jobs after sending applications to them. 2. Conflicts that arise between employers and job seekers when there are only a few job offers must be reduced. 3. Managers will find the necessary amount of manpower when there is a need for additional manpower to meet unexpected changes in plans. 4. The level of assurance of the availability of future work for casual workers will be increased. The system is worth it because there are no existing web-based systems that provide recruitment opportunities to casual job seekers in Meru town. This is an improvement over the current manual method of recruiting people to work on a per diem basis. The frustrations of waiting to be hired only to discover that all positions are filled will be reduced. This can be attributed to the system's ability to distinguish between positions that have been matched with received applications and those that have not yet been filled with the required workers. This section reviews the literature relating to the informal sector and casual employment. Throughout this section, the terms informal sector and informal economy are used to refer to a constant entity. The term black economy can be used to refer to the informal economy. (Dilnot A. &., 1981). The concept of the “informal sector” first appeared in an International Labor Organization study of economic markets in Ghana (Hart, 1973). This economy is present in many developing countries like Kenya. This involves both the typical formal sector and an unsanctioned economy in which economic transactions take place outside the usual channels with excellent socio-economic benefits. According to the dual labor market theory (Doeringer, 1971), the labor market is divided into four classes: primary, secondary, informal and illegal (as illustrated in diagram 1). The primary sector is regulated salaried jobs such as white-collar jobs. The secondary sector includes jobs that are less secure than primary jobs and poorly regulated, for example lower-paid jobs in the service sector. The dual labor market theory emphasizes that the informal sector is made up of people who do not have access to primary or secondary work. These are people who operate their own small business on cash or non-cash terms..