ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the emerging collective forms of informal transport workers and their potential for enabling access to social protection (SP) measures in Tanzania. Although many transport workers do not own their own vehicles, many see themselves as formal businessmen because they pay for their driving licenses, government taxes, and must earn a profit each day, after paying for vehicles rent. Vehicle owners circumvent labour laws, and the government is complicit by not taking action on behalf of the informal transport workers. Despite their structural power, it is limited by a highly competitive sector, but transport workers have formed associations that provide limited preventive and promotive SP measures such as welfare services, short-term unemployment insurance, savings groups, enable access to loans, and ad-hoc representation. These associations understand the needs, priorities, and contributory capabilities of their members better than formal SP sector institutions, but they need capacity-building to improve their effectiveness. For the government to provide appropriate SP to informal transportation workers, it should improve its institutions coordination and allow participation of their associations’ leaders in the formulation and implementation of SP programmes and schemes.
