Call to ensure social security for informal sector workers

11 May 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

The issue of social security of around four crore workers in informal sector needs to be addressed in the national budget, experts at a view exchange meeting said yesterday. Describing social security as human security, economist Prof Muzaffer Ahmad said economic growth cannot be sustainable without giving recognition to the labour force in the informal sector. Nagorik Udyog and Partnership of Women in Action (PaWa) jointly organised the view exchange meeting on 'Social security and informal sector' at the National Press Club in the city. The workers in informal sector account for about 80 percent of the total labour force of five crore in the country, said Zakir Hossain, chief executive of Nagorik Udyog, while presenting the keynote paper. Quoting surveys, he said some 44.70 percent of the total labor force are self-employed and 20.29 percent are day-laborers. So, the state should pay more attention to the education, health, shelter, water and sanitation facilities for them who are keeping the economy going. “Informal sectors are also helping formal sectors to sustain in many ways. Studies showed that only women workers in informal sector creates a market of products worth over Tk 15000 crore a year,” he added. Budgetary allocation for social security, being implemented through a number of programmes, is meant for the destitute rather than a poor day-laborer who is not protected by labour law or trade union, said researcher Monwar Musatfa Jolly. Sultan Uddin Ahmed, assistant executive director, Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies (BILS), said both the issues of 'informal sector' itself and the 'social security' need to be legally recognised to ensure human rights and social security of the workers in informal sector. There should be a legal structure to protect the workers' interests and an institutionalised structure to implement it, he said. The experts called for forming an Informal Sector Service Unit (ISSU) in the ministry concerned for the welfare of workers and giving them state recognition.