Government officials and labour experts have urged the government to bring all sectors — self-employed, informal and migrant workers — under the social security net for better performance of workers. People are more worried about their future these days and it is hampering their work, they said in an interaction organised by Nepal Labour Journalists’ Association today.

Once a person is included in the social security net, their work performance increases significantly because they are less worried about the future, said labour expert from National Labour Academy Dr Shiva Sharma. “Social security net should include all people in its policies and programmes,” he said, adding that isolation of the informal sector and migrant workers from the Social Security Fund is not justifiable.

Currently, the Social Security Fund has included only employees of the formal sector and a large section of the labour force have not been included.

According to the Labour Force Survey II, the country has a labour force of about 11.77 million, and only 700,000 people who are employed in government jobs including civil servants, police, military and teachers have been getting social security benefits.

Similarly, the board has been trying to provide social security for about 1.2 million workers. About 9.3 million people working in the informal sector are isolated from the process.

However, authorities at the fund do not agree that it has been ignoring the informal sector. “Our law permits us to include all sectors in the social security net, but it has not been passed due to political instability,” said executive director at the fund Kebal Prasad Bhandari.

According to him, the fund wants to first start programmes for the formal sector and integrate other sectors later. “But we don’t have sufficient technical backup for it,” he said.

“We don’t have social security numbers of people to track them and because of this problem we have not started pilot programmes,” he said. Poverty Alleviation Fund, and Ministry of Health and Population have been issuing cards arbitrarily when the Home Ministry is planning to introduce electronic cards to replace paper-based citizenship cards.

“We are lobbying for one card for one person. That will help us monitor them,” he said, adding that an electronic citizen card is sufficient if it is properly managed. It will also help us start our programmes, Bhandari added.

Director general of the Foreign Employment Department Purna Chandra Bhattarai said that the country needs social security for all people based on their contribution. The state cannot afford large expenditure for social security, so contribution-based model could be an option, he said. “People working in foreign employment can contribute for pension plan and other plans, if we are able to bring friendly programmes for them,” he said.

About 3.5 million, including 2.4 million documented migrant Nepali workers, are believed to be working abroad but there is no social security plan for them. The Foreign Employment Promotion Board has been providing compensation to families of deceased migrant workers and other welfare schemes. “We want to expand our services to include social security programmes but we have not explored it,” said acting executive director of the board Girija Sharma.

Other participants, including programme manager of UN Women Saru Joshi, officer at ILO Navin Kumar Karna, and officer at Helvetas Bashanta Kumar Karki said that the country needed to expand the social security net to include the large mass outside the formal sector. The government should be serious about the security of over nine million people working in the informal sector or who are self-employed, they said.

Published ON: 14 December 2012 | The Himalayan Times