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Article 12, paragraph 1, of the Convention. Payment of wages at regular intervals. The Committee has been commenting for a number of years on the need to amend section 206 of Decree No. 67-126/MFP/T of 1967 which exempts all agricultural, industrial and commercial undertakings from the obligation to pay at regular intervals not exceeding 15 days the wages of workers employed on a daily or weekly basis. Regrettably, the Government’s last report does not provide any further explanations on this point. The Committee wishes to refer, in this connection, to Paragraph 4 of the Protection of Wages Recommendation, 1949 (No. 85), which specifies that the maximum intervals for the payment of wages should ensure that wages are paid not less than twice a month at intervals not exceeding 16 days in the case of workers whose wages are calculated by the hour, day or week, and not less than once a month in the case of employed persons whose remuneration is fixed on a monthly or annual basis. Moreover, the Committee recalls paragraph 355 of its General Survey of 2003 on protection of wages in which it pointed out that “the rationale underlying [this Article of the Convention] is to discourage long wage payment intervals and thus to minimize the likelihood of indebtedness among the workers [since] the quintessence of wage protection is the assurance of a periodic payment allowing the worker to organize his everyday life with a reasonable degree of certainty and security”. The Committee therefore once again urges the Government to take appropriate steps to ensure that all workers without exception to whom wages are paid or payable receive their wages at regular intervals thus giving full effect to section 160 of the Labour Code which provides that wages must be paid every 15 days for those employed by the day or week and once a month for those employed by fortnight or month.

In addition, the Committee recalls its previous comment in which it had requested the Government to supply detailed information on the situation of accumulated wage arrears to which the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association had alluded on an earlier occasion. The Committee understands that, in 2002, the estimated amount of public pay arrears, including wage arrears, stood at 132 billion Communauté Financière Africaine (CFA) francs and that, since the establishment of the Autonomous Centre for the State-owed Arrears Settlement (CADIE) in 2000, the Government has been pursuing a strict arrears audit policy. As a result, in 2006, the total amount of arrears was reduced by CFA14 billion. The Committee of Experts has consistently taken the view that the delayed payment of wages or the accumulation of wage debts clearly contravenes the letter and the spirit of the Convention and render the application of most of its other provisions simply meaningless. In the absence of any concrete information provided by the Government on this point, the Committee is obliged to once more ask the Government to provide full particulars about the nature and extent of the persistent difficulties concerning the timely payment of wages, especially in the public sector, and the measures or initiatives taken in order to settle all outstanding payments and prevent the recurrence of similar problems in the future.

[The Government is asked to reply in detail to the present comments in 2009.]