ITUC/Global union and WB/IMF High-level Meetings, Feb 10-12, 2015, Washington DC. Some 70+ trade union activists, covering all the content and dozen of people from world ban k and IMF participated in the meeting discussed on various issues relating with labor market and economy.

The three days program was divined into . topics and each topics was managed as panel, where the presenter were from WB and IMF and discussant were from TU around the world making comment on the presentation, sharing the situation back home and continent as well as making policy recommendation for change.

I was one of the discussant on the issues of the Job creation and growth as sub-theme: Youth unemployment. This is my intervention as panelist, representing Asian Trade Unions.

Pannel- VII 

Thanks for the opportunity to be part of this program as well as the panel of this impotent issues.

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As presenter mentioned un-employment has been increased after economic crisis in developed world. But, it is the result of unequal distribution of resources and widening inequality in the case of our part of the world, which caused high rate of poverty as well.

Similarly, IMF is putting emphasis on gender budgeting issues, but more important thing is gender sensitization in policy and law of the different states.

Poverty, informal sector and migration are big issues, while talking about the un-employment, which is deep concern of developing region and in Asia, it is concentrated in South Asia, where from I am here. So I would like to focus on these issues, while intervening in this session.

  • Securing good jobs for youth is an agenda of global priority and everybody accept this as principal, but in reality, young people are the one facing serious problem of joblessness and living in more vulnerable condition, which caused even social unrest.
  • Youth are more creative and energetic population, but they are not getting proper opportunity to perform, caused by lack of work opportunity.
  • And, those who got the job, are also not decent to fulfil their need and qualification. This problem is more serious in least developed and developing part of the world.
  • As result, millions of young people are migrating just to look for job and putting themselves even more in vulnerable condition.
    • In many countries, migrant populations are living under slavery, not even getting committed wage and benefit in contract paper.
    • Even in the country having TU rights, ILO core labor standards have not been respected and giving access to exercise in the case of migrant labor.
    • Women migrants’ condition is even worse, caused by additional problem of gender based violence and private sphere of workplace such as domestic workers.
    • If, I take example of my own country Nepal, 400,000 new job seekers join the job market annually, but the very few job are available in the formal sectors. And, they prefer to join foreign migration rather joining informal sector, which is taken by another migrant workers from neighbouring country. It caused circular migration
    • In this way, having 3 per cent migrant population in the  world scenario, but in our case it is about 15 per cent of the population and 30 per cent of workforce, with majority of young people. It is our big challenge for development of the national economy as well.
  • Brain drain is another problem of developing countries.
  • Similarly, talking about the informal economy,
    • about 90 per cent of work in my region is in informal sector
    • among those workers, vast majority are women, who are uneducated, enormously exploited & discriminated
    • Majority of them are ignored by society as well as state and not recognised even as workers by policy and law of the state.
  • Large pie of the people living under poverty is also located in my region, which is common challenge for whole world rather just for region.

Way out – In our part of the world has one saying that old people share the history and young one share the dream. Believing on this saying, I would like to share six points as way out to get rid of from joblessness and vulnerability of the young and women, which can contribute even to reduce the social unrest and create peace in society as well.

  1. Quality education is the most important in regard to job creation, which should be linked with skill for livelihood
  2. Coverage of the labor law and social security system across the sector of employment and all kind of work, rather waiting to formalize all job
  3. Create the circumstance to respect and implement core labor standards covering all workers, regardless of formal/informal and local/migrant status of workers
  4. Attitude towards job need to be changed as making all job as Decent and Dignified. It may help people comfortably join available job such as domestic work, irregular/daily wage job etc.
  5. Development of policy to use natural resource/ agriculture based work collectively such as formation of cooperative with support of new technology, would help to create local job, where majority of workers are women, low educated, under-privileged and people living with poverty and located in peripheral area of the country.
  6. To address and reduce the labour migration in long term, development of proper scheme and planned project in different level as small and medium entrepreneurship and big project to provide share for migrants’ family, to invest part of remittance to make use of earning toward job creation and develop sustainable economy.

Finally, while WB and IMF would be developing its own policy as well providing support to its member states in different ways, such as technical, financial or based on its expertise, if it could give enough attention on these areas, would contribute to create job for young and marginalised population from the formal sector of the employment and sustainable economy of the country.

Thanks !

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