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Article 8, paragraph 1, of the Convention. The Committee has been requesting the Government for the last ten years to clarify the meaning of section 107 of the Labour Code under which deductions may be made for deposits (consignations) prescribed by individual contracts of employment. In view of the fact that the Convention permits deductions from wages only under the conditions and to the extent prescribed by national laws or regulations or fixed by collective agreements or arbitral awards, the above provision would need to be revised and therefore the Committee ventures to suggest that the words "and the individual labour contract" (et les contrats individuels du travail) should be deleted while the expression "compulsory levies" (prélèvements obligatoires) should be defined by reference to specific provisions of the Labour Code authorizing such levies. The Committee hopes that the Government will take the necessary steps at the first suitable opportunity so as to bring the national legislation into conformity with this Article of the Convention on which it has been commenting for some years.

Article 12, paragraph 1, of the Convention and Part V of the report form. The Committee recalls its previous observations in which it requested the Government to provide concrete information on the nature and scale of the persistent problem of wage arrears in the public sector (e.g. number of workers affected, amount of accumulated wage debt, length of delay in payment, branches of economic activity concerned) and any measures taken to improve the current situation. The Committee regrets the absence of any response from the Government on this point. It notes with concern that, according to certain sources the wage arrears to teachers, security forces and civil servants vary at present from three to nine months’ pay, while recent World Bank figures indicate that the total amount of arrears in the public service (i.e. unpaid wages, unpaid contributions to pension funds and debts to private suppliers) represents more than 23 per cent of the GDP. The Committee refers in this connection to paragraphs 23, 360 and 411 to 412 of the General Survey of 2003 on the protection of wages in which attention was drawn to the ongoing wage crises in several African countries and invites the Government to send its observations on the issues raised in the present comments.