East African Business Week

ARUSHA, TANZANIA- East African Community (EAC) partner states have to effect reciprocal opening of border posts by keeping them open and manned 24 hours, according to the final Common Market protocol released recently by the EAC secretariat.
    This is aimed at enabling the effective free movement of persons and labour in the region as per the Protocol on the establishment of the EAC Common Market.  The instruction is embedded in part D (7) of the protocol which says that border posts of the partner states should be open and manned 24hrs.
    This is part of the protocol seen by East African Business Week which is composed of 56 Articles that guide the Common Market that comes with a number of freedoms and rights that can be effectively implemented by the citizens and governments of the partner states.
    In accordance with the provisions of Articles 76 and 104 of the Treaty, the protocol provides for the free movement of goods, persons, labour, services, capital and the right of residence. This means traders will not be paying taxes to the national governments or that the persons traveling to another partner state will not need official travel documents.  Therefore Part C (Article 6) of the Protocol on the Free Movement of Goods states the free movement of goods between partner states shall be governed by the Customs Law of the Community.
    In addition to the Customs Law, the free movement of goods is governed by the protocol on standardization, quality assurance, metrology and testing and the protocols that may be concluded on sanitary, phyto-sanitary and technical barriers to trade.   Article 7 of the protocol states that the partner states provide guarantee for the free movement of citizens of the other partner states within their territories.
    However the free movement of persons does not exempt a person from arrest or extradition in case of a crime.
    Therefore free movement of persons is subject to limitations imposed by the host partner state on grounds of public policy, security or health.
    The protocol requires the partner states to establish a common standard system of issuing national identification documents to their nationals.    It says that a citizen who wishes to travel to another partner state shall use a valid common standard travel document but for states that have agreed to use machine readable and electronic national identity cards as travel documents may do so.
Having acquired the valid travel document, a person can apply for employment and accept offers of employment.One can conclude contracts and take up employment in accordance with the contracts, national laws and administrative actions without any discrimination.
The person can also enjoy freedom of association, collective bargaining and enjoy the rights and benefits of social security.
The partner states are also required to harmonise labour policies, laws and programmes and should undertake to mutually recognize academic and professional qualification granted, experience obtained, requirements met, licences and certificates on other partner states.