Socio-Economic Analysis of Daily Labourers in Urban Masses: A Case Study of Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

Present work is an attempt to analysis the socio-economic conditions of daily labourers, who play significant role through performing hard physical labour in growing Ethiopia cities. This study was conducted in Mekelle city with the objectives to assess ethnicity, religion, education and marital status of daily construction labourers, and to describe their income, residential, basic amenities and facilities. To fulfill the objectives, primary data were generated through field surveys. On the basic of purposive sampling 120 daily labourers were interviewed randomly from three selected sub-cities. The study analyses that 78% daily labourers belonged to Tigrian ethnicity who were mainly followers of Orthodox Christianity (66.7%). The Migrant daily labourers were 83% whose educational background was measurable. Nearly 60% daily labourers were either illiterate or having only knowledge of read and write without any formal education. They survived lives engaging their family in poor employments consisted with hotel/restaurant workers (33.48%) followed by agricultural labourers (27.23%), housemaids (22.32%) and pity sellers (16.96%). The total family earning of 72.5% daily labourers was less than1200birr per month, and at least 76% their dwellings were starved of civil amenities and facilities.

Key words: Daily labour, society religion, ethnicity, occupation, income and urban area.