Fair wages and social protection in spotlight:

New strategies vital to tackle labour issues

The following are excerpts of a speech delivered by Labour Relations and Manpower Minister Athauda Seneviratne on the occasion of signing of a memorandum of understanding between the National Institute of Labour Studies and the National Labour Institute of India. The event took place at the Labour Secretariat on November 13.

As a developing country, Sri Lanka is faced with the main challenges of creating a conducive environment for full and productive employment. These include payment of a fair wage and social protection by domestic enterprises faced with increasing competitive pressures in the global economy; providing productive decent employment for the large number of people employed in the informal economy; giving priority to market driven economic growth, and aiming to deal with the social consequences afterwards.

Sri Lanka enjoys very high literacy rate, and 97 percent of our children are enroled at school. Our infant mortality rate and maternal mortality rate at childbirth are on par with that of many developed countries. The country provides free healthcare to all. Education is free and universal from childhood to university.

The World Bank in their studies has observed that in Sri Lanka challenges remain particularly in improving the quality of education services, tackling child malnutrition, and addressing regional disparities in social outcomes. The World Bank has noted that “Sri Lanka’s accomplishments are remarkable for a developing country, particularly one that has endured a period over 25-year civil conflict”.

However, still we have many challenges to provide our citizens with decent work. That is employment that ensures, rights, security, equity and dignity of workers. We have formulated the National Decent Work Policy and its Action Plan and currently implementing with the allocations made by the annual budget. The ILO is supporting with the Decent Work Country Programme. However, in view of the emerging challenges we need to formulate new policies, new strategies and new action programmes. This need new knowledge generated through research, surveys, studies, reliable data etc, and empowerment of stakeholders through capacity-building, awareness raising, etc.

Take for instance the current economic recession. Until all the countries have been hit by the current economic recession, the belief was that market economy is an achievement with potential for rapid growth, and the private initiative has an extraordinary ability to generate wealth, and an economy open to competition is more efficient than a closed economy.

However, with the current economic recession its credibility has been increasingly called in question, both economically and politically.

The countries world over are experiencing mass job losses. In this light, the globlization is running the risk of losing its legitimacy.

Thus, there is a profound necessity to formulate policies that combine economic efficiency and social efficacy.

Ethically there are limits for social exclusion.

Take for instance the concept of “flexecurity” which is being evolved to address both issues of much needed flexibility for globalization to become more efficient, and the demands for security of people.

It shows the realization of the difficulty of considering only one aspect, the flexibility of policies. Security of workers is also equally important, if not, it is difficult to sustain.

In this context, I wish to emphasize the need for strengthening our research base to undertake extensive research, and evolving new strategies and action programmes on diverse labour issues. The National Institute of Labour Studies alone cannot undertake such a mammoth task. This requires collaboration both nationally and internationally, with ministries, institutions, workers and employer organizations, multi-lateral agencies etc.

Such collaboration would help synergize and complement each other in addressing the challenges.

In closing, I hope that the MoU will mark the dawn of a new era of learning and research collaboration between the two institutes.

We know that in India, technology is in an advanced state. I hope we could use the new ICT technology in the activities.

I also hope that the MoU would pave way for the researchers from the two countries to join together to explore areas of common interests and tackle grand challenges that exceed the scope of a small group of researchers. I thank again the Government of India, the National Labour Institute of India, and the ILO for supporting my Ministry is signing the MoU.

I wish to thank the two delegates from the National Labour Institute for coming all the way from New Delhi for this event and also the interest they have taken to sign this collaborative MoU.

I also wish to express my appreciation to the staff of the National Institute of Labour Studies, especially Director General N.G. Kularatne, for his leadership and commitment to bring the institute to its present state.