Intervention by India

323rd Session of Governing Body, 12-27 March, 2015

GB.323/POL/1

First Item on the Agenda

Area of Critical Importance: protecting workers from unacceptable forms of Work

Madam Chair,

To begin with, we thank the office of ILO for bringing the agenda note on the floor of GB for discussion.

We believe that the objective of  protecting workers from unacceptable forms of work is consistent with the fundamental objectives of the Organisation and we are satisfied to note that programme and budget proposal 2016-17 of ILO has given due emphasis on elimination of all kinds of work that deny fundamental tenets of decent work.

We agree that to acknowledge this issue of unacceptable forms of work is an effective way of raising awareness about  the issue and bringing it to the centre of our discussions. At the same time we must recognise that the concept of unacceptable forms of work has several connotations and cross cutting areas and we must be very careful as to what we mean by the term and what are the boundaries of our work under this concept. ILO has over the almost 100 years of its existence has acquired a strong sense of the fundamentals and has produced an impressive body of work. We believe that ILO must continue to be guided by that. The definitional clarity must not be compromised otherwise the objective will probably be lost in contradictions and confusions.   Nor should the concept be used to create any additional bench marking.  We feel that it would be prudent to have a focussed approach instead of packing a lot under this heading. For india the definition resonates our concerns regarding forced labour, bonded labour, migrant workers and workers in unorganised sector who are the most vulnerable groups of workers .It is therefore pertinent  to identify the occurrence and incidence of unacceptable forms of work in different national context and to look into the conditions and causal factors for designing  feasible solutions.

With this understanding of the ACI we are firmly of the opinion that the work under this ACI must be guided by the relevant ILO conventions. I am happy to inform that the country priorities identified under DWCP-INDIA 2013-17 are in line with the areas of critical importance of ILO for we believe that the country specific interventions of ILO must be in complete coherence with the national context  and policy framework so that it is easier to implement these and to ensure extended outreach to the targeted section.

We understand the linkage of this ACI with other ACIS in particular ACI 6 concerning formalisation of informal economy. Lack of social security cover and mismatch or absence of desirable skill sets in these groups must be recognised as the root cause of the vulnerability and hence extending social protection and extensive skill development initiative must be the key policy drivers of the action in this ACI besides capacity building of the social partners for them to pursue this agenda.

A new initiative is being undertaken by Govt. of India for identification and registration of unorganised workers. Contract and construction workers who are mostly migrants are also proposed to be included in our recent initiative for portability of Provident Fund benefit thereby bringing them in formal social security cover. We are working for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) for the construction workers to recognise the informally or traditionally learned skills and to include them in the mainstream economy..

We appreciate the global study undertaken by ILO to examine the concept of unacceptable forms of work .We would like to be apprised of as to what extent the study has been successful to identify the gap existing in different national contexts. While we appreciate the global initiative, we strongly adhere to our reservations against the possible linkage to trade.

Madam Chair,

We acknowledge the list of initiatives undertaken by ILO in member countries on elimination of compulsory child labour, forced labour and redressing unacceptable forms of work and believe ILO would continue to provide technical expertise, capacity building of the constituents , knowledge dissemination and sharing of best practices through national and regional workshops.

 With these remarks, we support the draft decision at Para 26 of the agenda document.

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