Published in The Financial Express on Tuesday, 10 April 2018
Creating employment for youths key to sustainable development
FE Report
Experts at a dialogue on Monday laid emphasis on creating employment for young generation in order to achieve sustainable growth and development.
They also called for protection of workers’ rights, expansion of social security for working people and developing a coping mechanism for addressing the challenges of automation at work.
The Economic Relations Division (ERD) organised the dialogue on ‘Inclusive growth and decent work’ with support from the UNDP-funded Knowledge for Development Management (K4DM) Project. Monowar Ahmed, Additional Secretary of ERD, chaired the session.
Speaking at the dialogue, Dr Khondoker Golam Moazzem, Research Director of Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD), suggested addressing the issue of emerging labour standards in the context of graduation from LDC and sustainable development goals (SDGs), as Bangladesh has to comply with the global labour standards now in addition to the national standard.
He also suggested addressing concerns and issues related to employment and decent work and stressed the need to strengthen coordination among key stakeholders for ensuring inclusive growth and decent work.
He also underscored the need for complying with different conditionality for availing preferential market access to the EU, a major market for Bangladesh products.
“Bangladesh needs to comply with 27 core international conventions, 15 of which are related to human and labour rights while 12 others are linked to environment and governance principles,” he added.
The meeting was addressed, among others, by Mikail Shiper, former secretary to the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Rubana Hoque, Managing Director of Mohammadi Group, Kamran T Rahman, President of Bangladesh Employers’ Federation, Syed Sultan Ahmed, Executive Director of BILS, Dr. Kazi Anowarul Hoque, Additional Secretary of ERD, and Rushidan Islam Rahman, Executive Chairperson, Centre for Development and Employment Research.