Progress still low for rolling out unemployment insurance

The progress made in providing unemployment insurance has been extremely limited as almost all targets were missed since the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS) was adopted in 2015 to protect unemployed workers.

Social insurance includes unemployment insurance, which is one of the components of unemployment protection measures that include temporary and income support for workers who become unemployed or are underemployed.

Under the NSSS, four initial initiatives -- conducting a study and developing a plan for the National Social Insurance Scheme (NSIS) in 2018, introducing the NSIS on a pilot basis in January 2019, formulating the NSIS law in January 2020, and rolling out the NSIS nationwide in January 2021 -- were taken for the welfare of unemployed workers.

All these targets have been missed, according to a new study, styled "Towards improved unemployment protection in Bangladesh", by MA Abdur Razzaque, chairman of the Research and Policy Integration for Development (RAPID).

Razzaque shared the study's findings at an event organised by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in collaboration with the European Union (EU) at the Radisson Blu Dhaka Water Garden yesterday. The event was attended by government high ups, diplomats, researchers and union leaders.

Potential coverage in the initial stage will be low if only the formal sector is covered as 85 per cent of the jobs in Bangladesh are in informal sectors, Razzaque said.

So, informal sectors should be considered in the unemployment insurance scheme of the active labour market policy, he added.

For instance, of the total employment in the agricultural sector, 95.4 per cent of the jobs are informal.

In case of the industrial sector, 89.9 per cent of the work is informal. Similarly, 71.8 per cent of those employed in the services sector would be informal workers, he said while presenting the study's key findings.

Razzaque also said the duration of benefits under the NSSS would be 13 weeks within a period of 12 months of unemployment and 26 weeks within a period of 24 months.

Koen Everaert, head of cooperation of the EU delegation, said the absence of a real worker database is a major problem for disbursing unemployment funds to those who really need it.

In 2020, the EU and Germany donated $113 million to Bangladesh's government for disbursing among retrenched garment workers who lost their jobs through shut downs or furloughs due to the severe fallouts of Covid-19.

He said every retrenched worker will get Tk 3,000 per month for three months, but a major portion of the amount is still not disbursed as the real unemployed workers have not been found yet.

Md Ehsan-E-Elahi, secretary to the labour and employment ministry, said money was disbursed among 9,000 retrenched workers of the garment sector as of Wednesday, and the government has a target to reach another 60,000 workers with the EU and German funds.

Tuomo Poutiainen, country director of the ILO in Bangladesh, said social protection systems became a front liner for protecting workers during the Covid-19 pandemic.  However, the strategies for social protection of workers have not been put in place properly in Bangladesh, he added.