Lilian Keene-Mugerwa

Building a legal service platform to protect the rights of vulnerable workers

In recent times, more low-income earners – the majority of whom are female and youth – are faced with illegal evictions without reasonable notices, which in turn disrupts their sources of livelihood. Platform for Labour Action creates easier access to legal services for low-income earners.   

Entrepreneur Name: Lilian Keene-Mugerwa, Ashoka Fellow  

Organization: Platform for Labour Action (PLA) 

Country: Uganda 

Website: www.pla-uganda.org

Field of action: Protecting Vulnerable Groups 

Needs support to achieve greater impact in: Fundraising and Business Development, Digital Technical Expertise, Marketing and Communications, 

The mission of the social enterprise before and after Coronavirus

Platform for Labor Action’s (PLA) vision is a society where economic rights and social justice are respected, promoted, and observed in the world of work.  It aims at promoting and protecting the rights of vulnerable and marginalized workers through empowerment of communities and individuals. PLA’ s theory of change is – IF PLA institutional capacity is strengthened to deliver human rights, accountability and social protection, research and knowledge management; THEN it will possible to protect the human rights and improved livelihoods of vulnerable and marginalized workers in Uganda. For this to be realized, it is assumed that the PLA will routinely conduct environmental scans to adjust its programs according to the changes in context. In addition, PLA will continuously realign its human resources to optimize their competencies to deliver on the strategic plan.

PLA empowers communities by creating awareness on issues affecting vulnerable workers and provide free legal aid, legal advocacy, and policy engagement, amongst others. Additionally, it establishes partnerships and cooperation with organizations sharing similar objectives and values to ensure effective implementation of their mandate.   PLA represents vulnerable and marginalized workers and poor persons in dispute resolution processes; advising, negotiating, and representing clients in formal arbitration and mediation procedures; litigating to compel arbitration; serving as settlement counsel for clients and drafting employment contracts.

Before COVID-19, most clients would physically visit the PLA offices for legal aid. But due to the lockdown, the organization adopted multimedia approaches which are used to encourage social distancing and reducing the spread of the coronavirus.  

PLA has set up a two-pronged mobile legal aid system named Pulida wa baPakas – meaning legal aid for low-income workers.  Pulida wa baPakas enables system users(clients) to ask legal questions and get preliminary solutions on diverse matters about labour, employment and land, using their mobile phones. The client can receive an automated response from the system dictionary without physically visiting their legal aid centres. In case the system cannot send a response, or the client requires a personalized response, their messages will be saved and queued for one of the legal aid team members to send a personalized response to the client.

Each client is given an account on Pulida wa baPaka’ss system when they first visit the legal aid clinics or call the toll-free lines. This offers Client-Lawyer interaction online legal aid. The system can instantly notify clients on the progress of their cases, updates and required evidence. The clients can send feedback to their legal officer handling the case through their account.

With this system, the clients will only have to make programmed visits with lawyers. Which will reduce the costs incurred on transport to and from the legal aid clinics/offices to follow up with the status of their case or pass information to their lawyers. This will also reduce the overcrowding at the legal clinics, supporting the implementation of the COVID -19 Uganda health guidelines. PLA has attracted more clients using the new multimedia approach and toll-free line. They hope to reach about 3 000 marginalized and vulnerable people in Uganda.

Create the post-COVID world. 

Help Lilian and her team develop their solution!

PLA’s concrete needs facing Covid-19:

  • Technological Expertise: to create a database of automated responses and an algorithm that examines the message received, searches for keywords and matches them to those in the system and sends an automated response to the user.
  • Marketing and Branding: to enable in publicizing the system to intended users, document and effectively and effectively communicate the changes, impact on lives of the vulnerable populations and leverage replication and reach and reach while tracking milestones.
  • Human Resource Expertise: to assist in recruiting systems developers, data analysts, communication and marketing officers, and monitoring and evaluation officers.
  • Advocacy: to develop an advocacy strategy for the system developed.
  • Funding and Financing: to pay for the annual subscriptions to the Uganda communication Commission for the sms code, airtime to ensure a free service as well as staff to develop the new system.
SUPPORT