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Contract Clauses on HIV/AIDS, Child Labor, and Vulnerable Groups One of the simplest things a Transport Project can do is to make sure that all contracts used by the Ministry of Transportation are consistent with international and national labor law, which prohibits contractors from hiring children less than 15 years of age for (hazardous) work. In Mozambique, DFID requires its contractors to give priority to vulnerable groups in its hiring practices. These groups include households led by widows, single mothers, and households that lack a permanent source of revenue. Likewise, the MOT should include language in their contracts requiring construction firms to educate their workers on how to protect themselves and the people who live in the communities where they work from HIV/AIDS (see sample contracting language). Thus, preventing more orphans and infected young people in their work areas. The success of both measures depends, in part, upon having the manpower, with the right skill set, to verify that the clauses are being respected and that sanctions are applied for those contractors who do not live up to their contractual agreements. This pre-supposes that you have the manpower to monitor adequately, which, unfortunately, is often not the case. Budgets for transport projects in countries with legal systems that have the capacity to prosecute such cases should be sure to include funding to pay for this type of monitoring. But this is only half the problem, engineers feel competent building things, not distributing condoms and attempting to change people’s behavior. While a contractor may be willing to commit to providing HIV/AIDS prevention education, he may have no idea about how to go about doing it. The Ethiopian Road Sector Development Program (RSDP) (see Africa Transport – Technical Note, Working with Road Contractors on HIV/AIDS Prevention) worked closely with contractors to help them to comply with this new requirement of proving HIV/AIDS prevention education. First they had to educate the contractors about HIV/AIDS, many of whom were from China and Korea and were less familiar with the virus and its impact in Africa. In the process, the Roads Program staff helped the contractors identify two main HIV/AIDS prevention interventions that they could finance: Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) and condom distribution. Later on, they encouraged the contractors to develop partnerships with the health facilities in the host communities where they were operating. This helped them expand the scope of their IEC and condom distribution activities to include a wider range of community residents, not just those who worked for the company. It also gave its HIV/AIDS infected workers access to counseling and anti-retroviral treatment. The project developed a format for the contractors to include with their monthly progress reports, which tracked their achievements in the areas of IEC and condom distribution. It tracked the number of condoms, posters, and brochures distributed as well as information sessions held and people reached through these sessions for each of their operational sites. Contract budgets eventually included a special line item for HIV/AIDS prevention activities, which also facilitated tracking. While it took a while to get this component off the ground, it proved very effective, with 85% of the contractors’ workers reporting that they had heard of HIV/AIDS and knew how it is transmitted. Ethiopia Roads Authority staff showed an even higher rate, with 90% reporting an awareness of HIV and its transmission. The 12,000 ERA staff went on to create an OVC fund, where they each contributed a portion of their earnings to assist orphans of ERA employees who have died from HIV/AIDS. Among the lessons learned from this project and others are:
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