Country Director International Labour Organization Geir Thomas Tonstol has reiterated the organization’s full support to Pakistan in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

In an exclusive interview with Radio Pakistan, he said our main support would be for SDP’s goal concerned with decent and productive work.

The Country Director ILO said Job creation would be a big priority for us because Pakistan has a very young population and many people will be entering in working age in next few years.

He said we can support Pakistani government in many ways including effective policy making and migration as we believe that labor migration should be safe with the protection of migrant workers’ rights.

Appreciating Pakistan’s longstanding commitment with ILO’s mandate, Geir Thomas Tonstol said out of 190 labor labor standards Pakistan has ratified thirty six. He said we are currently doing our best to support Pakistan’s government in paving the way for further ratifications. He said we do see a political will a
nd commitment from the government of Pakistan to honor their obligation under ratified conventions which is positive.

The ILO country head said Pakistan has signed a decent work country program with the ILO last year that sets big areas of collaboration with our partners being the umbrella program.

Talking about the functions and role of ILO in Pakistan, he said we have a very close partnership with the government and we also work with employer organizations and trade unions.

Together with these partners, we have assigned a decent work country program for Pakistan. We have identified priorities for our collaboration and we have come up with four big blocks under which we support the government, employees and workers and who are employment creators particularly for young people of Pakistan, making sure that workers can access social safeguard and social protection.

Commenting on child and forced labor, the ILO Country Head said there was a dramatic increase in child labor during floods and COVID period in
Pakistan. He said we are in conversation with the government and our partners to raise the minimum wage and enforcement of the minimum wage. He said we are also focused on training labor inspectors and to make them carry out their mandate efficiently.

To a question regarding minimum wage for security guards, he said it should be implemented in letter and spirit and the hiring companies should be made accountable for this. He further said more robust policy tools are need of the hour to deal with crisis situations which always lead to a sudden rise in child labor.

Source: Radio Pakistan