ILO renews calls for protection of all workers

By Lakmal Sooriyagoda

Issuing a Technical Memorandum on Sri Lanka’s labour administration system, the International Labour Organization (ILO) had recommended that the Labour Department should review existing legislation and the existing protection system to extend labour protection to the informal economy to ensure protection of all workers.

The Technical Memorandum had been issued by the International Labour Office in Geneva.

It had recommended that under the Labour Secretary/Commissioner General of Labour, a tripartite plus committee be created to ensure consultations between the social partners, other inspecting agencies outside the Ministry of Labour including private voluntary initiatives and the Department of Labour on all issues within the purview of labour inspections.

The mission further recommended of paying attention to status, conditions of service and qualifications of labour inspectors. It has recommended reviewing the entry qualifications of new inspectors and recruiting more university graduates to the inspectorate the placing labour inspectors at par with tax officers and Customs officers and to regain the lost ground in the last pay revision by the salaries and cadre commission.

The mission observed that the Ministry needs to take steps to emphasise the important of labour inspectors in advancing “decent work”.

While the mission highly appreciated the recent efforts of the Government to increase the number of inspectors, it strongly recommended that that the total number of staff be further increased in the near future to cope with challenges related to the growing economy and large informal sector.

The mission had recommended that a high level technical committee be appointed to re-examine the salary scales of labour inspectors with the purpose of upgrading the existing salary scale taking into account their specific function of labour law enforcement and placing inspectors in the same category as tax officers and Customs officers.