Editorial Desk :
The International Labour Organization (ILO), comprehensively explored the pros and cons of Bangladesh’s wide-ranging unemployment problem pointing out a series of obstacles that dominantly exist in the country’s enterprises. Moreover, non-existence of trustworthy data and many other bottlenecks in the operational system jeopardise many positive attempts launched by national, international enterprises and functionaries in their endeavour to mitigate the endless crises in the growth path.
The recent consultation meeting in Dhaka, attended by professional experts and analysts, found many inadequacies, shortfalls, underperformance and management hazards, widening the country’s unemployment problem. On the other hand, absence of credible and digitised employment databases, lack of appropriate legal provisions and regulatory frameworks are among major challenges, which frustrate many ways to promote jobless-protection measures in Bangladesh.
The findings of the ILO’s working paper presented at the consultation meeting detailed the absence of well-coordinated skills development programmes and limited institutional capacities of labour market implementing agencies. Social dialogue and proper knowledge on international standards in unemployment protection measures also hinders initiation of safeguard measures necessitated for huge jobless manpower.
While presenting the findings, experts mentioned about the incidence of labour market informality to a massive extent – 85 per cent of the country’s jobs are in the informal sector making it difficult to provide and adopt unemployment protection measures. Besides, they pointed out many intricate operational problems, lengthy
procedures, lenient punitive measures for violation of labour laws and weak enforcement of the available provisions responsible for not providing effective legal protection to workers facing employment termination.
Besides, National Social Security Strategy (NSS) of Bangladesh, adopted in 2015, duly recognised the gaps in support provision for the working-age population and amongst others, recommended exploring the possibilities for establishing a National Social Insurance Scheme (NSIS), a component of unemployment insurance (UI), also came in the deliberations.
The government and the EU were already implementing an Unemployment Protection programme to protect workers in the aftermath of Covid-19. Emphasis on adopting an ‘incremental’ approach for new social protection scheme for the unemployed must be taken in the best interest of the suffering young ones who are forced to leave the country in search of slavish jobs. The government after government ignored their miseries for the satisfaction of getting foreign exchange for the benefit of luxury of the privileged ones. It is criminal.
The government’ priority has to be to create jobs within the country instead of forcing the jobless ones to take up low level servile jobs abroad in most loathsome conditions. The country’s image is fouled.
