Inclusion of a module on labour migration in Zimbabwe's Labour Force and Child Labour Survey (LFCLS)
- Responsible Organisations: International Labour Organization (ILO) (International Organisation); Zimbabwe Statistical Office (ZIMSTAT) (Government)
- ILO Regions: Africa
- Country(ies): Zimbabwe
- Thematic areas: Evidence-based policy making
- MLFLM: 3.
- Sectors: Domestic work
Description
The ILO's Global Action Programme on Migrant Domestic Workers and Their Families (GAP-MDW) provided technical and financial support to ZIMSTAT (Zimbabwe Statistical Office), to include a module on labour migration abroad in the 2014 LFCLS (Labour Force and Child Labour Survey). Zimbabwe conducts its LFS every three years therefore this was a unique opportunity to produce data contributing to the policy dialogue among stakeholders in Zimbabwe and between Zimbabwe and South Africa. A methodology was developed to capture information on absent household members, and the ILO provided technical assistance to analyse the results of pre-tests and to train fieldworkers in charge of gathering the information. Fieldwork covering 16,000 households was conducted in June 2014 and, subsequently, a training to build the capacity of ZIMSTAT officials and other stakeholders on data analysis and report writing using international standards was conducted through the project and the Department of Statistics of the ILO. Technical expertise was provided for the integration of decent work indicators to facilitate the gathering of labour migration data and the monitoring of relevant indicators. ILO stakeholders have emphasised the importance of the labour migration module in strengthening the SADC's Labour Market Information Systems. The module makes Zimbabwe the first SADC country to incorporate a module capturing labour migration abroad, including migrant domestic workers, in its LFS, thus providing hard data on the proportion of households with absent members working abroad, the main countries of destination of migrant domestic workers, and patterns of remittances.
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