Legal Regulation of Informal Employment in Tanzania : The Need for Decent Work

The main purpose of this study is to investigate legal and policy gaps in regulating informal employment in Tanzania in order to expose areas that need to be addressed so that to extend legal protection to informal workers. This study is based on the idea that informal employment in Tanzania is not regulated; consequently informal workers are experiencing a number of decent work deficits such as workplace violence, lack of legally recognized trade unions, and lack of social security coverage. This is happening while Tanzania is committed to different documents to ensure decent work for all workers. There are efforts put in place by the government to extend legal protection to informal workers, but the efforts are still faced with challenges. This work recommends the formulation of laws that guarantee and protect informal workers rights, the extension of social security to informal workers through social assistance, speeding up formalization, and initiation of sufficient capacity building programmes aiming at providing entrepreneurial skills to informal workers, as well as formulation and implementation of policies and strategies that create decent jobs This work draw data from different groups of informal workers say street vendors, informal construction workers and workers from informal public transport workers. Data are collected from both primary and secondary sources; primary data are mainly collected from Arusha Tanzania using interview and observation while secondary data are collected by reviewing a number of documents