INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
	" Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere "

Employment Intensive Programme
 

In many regions of the world, millions of aspiring new entrants to the labour force face bleak job prospects and poverty. Those who are already employed usually have to contend with low wages and precarious employment. In the context of the growing informalization of employment, a large proportion of the labour force is engaged in low productivity activities in the informal rural and urban sectors. Even a higher rate of growth in the modern sector will not solve the problems of underemployment and poverty if there is no change in the overall pattern of investment and employment intensity of economic growth. The underlying concept of using surplus labour for the creation of productive assets offers evident advantages, particularly in countries with high levels of unemployment, underemployment and population growth, and where the cost of unskilled labour is low. The ILO's response has been the Employment Intensive Programme (EIP).

From emergency, relief and special public works programmes, greater emphasis has been placed, since the second half of the 1980s, on cost-effective, employment-based investments. In order to introduce employment objectives into mainstream investment programmes, labour-based approaches are recommended only where they are competitive with equipment-based approaches on both technical and economic grounds. Cost-effectiveness, technical feasibility and quality standards, alongside economic and social sustainability, have become the criteria for the choice and application of labour-based methods.

As a result, ILO assistance in the application of employment-intensive approaches for public investment programmes has come to emphasize five elements:

1. The promotion of the use of local resources;
2. The involvement of employers', workers' and community based organisations and the improvement of their capacity to organise, tender, and participate in investment-led employment strategies;
3. The fostering of enterprises for private sector execution of public works;
4. the development of the necessary capacity among government officials for contract preparation and management;
5. the introduction of the relevant labour standards in contracts to protect workers in a competitive private sector environment.

The Employment Intensive Programme's two main areas of emphasis are support to labour-based national public works, and community-based, demand-driven investment programmes.

The operational approach adopted by the employment-intensive programme is based on capacity-building in the private and public sectors and on the strategic use of public investment in infrastructure for the development of a tendering and contract system under which:

• a training programme in labour-based techniques is offered to interested SMEs;
• in parallel, training is also provided for line agencies and consulting engineers to enable them to fulfil their new functions, including the preparation and supervision of contracts, the improvement of the contract system and the establishment at a decentralized level of a transparent and efficient tendering and bidding system; and
• the introduction of labour-based technology in contract specifications.

Governing Body Document: Job creation programmes in the ILO
(a) Employment generation for poverty reduction: The role of employment-intensive approaches in infrastructure investment programmes
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For further information, please contact the Development Policies Department (POLDEV)
at Tel: +41.22.799.6436, Fax: +41.22.799.6867, or E-Mail: poldev@ilo.org