Labour and Employment Minister Bhupender Yadav has underlined the need to focus on improving the employment conditions of workers and has said this would also help in a strong and resilient economic recovery.
The Minister, who was addressing Ministerial session at the G20 Labour and Employment Ministers’ meeting in Bali, also spoke about the importance of countries to come together for promotion of responsive and robust policies relating to employment generation, social protection, skilling and formalisation in the post pandemic period for ensuring a more resilient, equitable and sustainable recovery.
“Union Minister also held several bilateral meetings with countries including Germany, Singapore, UAE, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Netherlands, and Turkiye,” said an official release on Wednesday.
Social security
The need for signing of Migration and Mobility Agreement and Social Security Agreement at the earliest was highlighted for facilitating ease of mobility and for ensuring social security to the international workers.
In all these meetings, the Minister briefed on India’s upcoming Presidency of the G-20 and broad priorities and sought the support of these countries.
In his address to the Ministerial session, he commended Indonesia for selecting priority areas such as labour market integration of persons with disabilities, sustainable growth and productivity in human capacity development through strengthening community based vocational training and also spoke about initiatives by India in these areas.
Gig and platform workers
The Minister highlighted the provisions made in the social security code for providing social security to the gig and platform workers. He further emphasised that the skill development is being aligned to the need of future of work.
Experiences gained from this year’s G20 Employment Working Group meetings would aid India in its upcoming presidency and would contribute to our pursuit of securing labour welfare, in light of the dynamic nature of the 21st Century world of work, he further said.