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Regional Seminar for Labour-Based Practitioners

"New challenges for employment-intensive investments"

Opening speech, by

Loretta de Luca (Director a.i. of the ILO Cairo Office)

Your Excellencies, Honoured Participants, Dear Colleagues and Friends,

Allow me first to thank the Egyptian Social Fund for Development, who is the organiser of this important event, for giving me the opportunity to speak to you.

"Decent employment", as the ILO calls it; that is, productive, adequately remunerated and safe employment, is now widely recognised as the key to a healthy, balanced, sustainable development. It is essential to provide to individuals, women and men, income security -and thus freedom from poverty - but also to provide them a sense of self-worth, human identity and dignity. It is essential to make individuals feel an integral part of the society where they live, and thus willing to contribute to its stability and progress. It is also essential to the economic community, nationally and globally, so it may find sufficient markets for its products, and the stable, dynamic, open environment it needs to thrive.

It is also now widely recognized that economic growth is necessary to create employment opportunities, but by no means sufficient. Jobless growth is a frequent phenomenon, worldwide; and one that is on the increase. Even impressive economic performances do not automatically translate into employment creation and poverty alleviation. Despite the growth of the world economy in recent years, the ILO estimates that at present over 1 billion persons - 1/3 of the world=s labour force - is still either unemployed or underemployed. And the economically active population is projected to continue growing faster than the rate of job creation.

Increasing the employment-intensity of growth is imperative. It basically means favouring employment-intensive sectors and activities, and favouring employment-intensive technologies.

Employment needs to become a major, explicit goal of economic decisions; one as important as economic growth itself. It needs to become an integral part of economic, financial and social policies. An employment-intensive growth strategy needs to be developed; and that urgently in view of the growing employment needs and expectations. Developing such a strategy requires the mobilisation and the coordination of many actors; internationally, but also at the national level, at the level of local communities and enterprises.

But precisely this need for urgent, coordinated action is creating a momentum that allows such mobilisation of energy and attention; a momentum on which we should ride.

This seminar is therefore most timely. At the international level, a number of recent developments augur well:

· The World Summit on Social Development organised by the United Nations in Copenhagen, in 1995, called for putting the promotion of employment at the centre of strategies and policies of governments; requesting UN agencies, in particular the ILO, to help them in this major challenge. And indeed this task has been at the forefront of ILO work.

· Last June, the Special Session of the UN General Assembly, titled "World Summit for Social Development and Beyond", stressed the need to elaborate a coherent and coordinated international strategy on Employment, and invited the ILO to facilitate the exchange of best practices in the field of employment generation.

· The Summit of the Heads of State and Government of the G-15, held in Cairo last June, reiterated the urgency for the ILO to design a "Comprehensive Employment Strategy" so as to stimulate employment-creation in all developing countries.

· An important, most welcome turn is occurring in the work paths of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, traditionally focused on economic stability and restrictive policies a turn towards poverty alleviation and employment creation. The theme of the annual meeting of their joint Development Committee, held in Prague last September, was: "Making the Global Economy Work for Everyone". Indeed, as mentioned above, the global economy has performed poorly in meeting the majority of people=s aspiration for decent work. So that theme is particularly opportune; and it also opens the way to cooperation with organisations, such as the ILO, that have been working precisely on that issue for decades. We are ready to team up!

· The ILO is organising a "World Employment Forum", in November 2001, to which national and international contributions are most welcome.

· On the continent that hosts the present seminar, the ILO has been developing a programme called Jobs for Africa, that advocates and pursues in 17 countries, including Egypt, an approach for employment creation based on boosting investment and reorienting the pattern of public and private investment towards employment-intensive activities and technologies; a programme based on the involvement and coordination of the main national stakeholders: various ministries and public institutions, employers= and workers= organisations, but also the academic community, NGOs and other representatives of the civil society.

· In Egypt, the ILO has also been developing a National Employment Programme, at the request of his Excellency the Prime Minister Atef Ebeid. This Programme, conceived and coordinated by Mr. Samir Radwan, an ILO high-ranking official, comprises a short- to medium-term plan for tackling unemployment, and has as one of its five pillars, the development of nation-wide labour-based public works programmes.

· The ILO Cairo Office is gladly lending its support to this National Employment Programme and to JFA-Egypt. Shortly it should also start a joint venture focused on building the capacity of local contractors, with the Egyptian SFD, with which we have a long, positive history of collaboration. The ILO Cairo Office, that covers North Africa, hosts a team of resident specialists working in 6 technical areas related to "decent work": The labour market, SMEs, Vocational Training, Occupational Safety and Health; and by the end of this year we expect a specialist in Labour Law/Labour Relations and one, precisely, in Employment-intensive technologies. This should enable us to intervene in this area more swiftly and effectively.

This does not mean that we will not need ASIST! We know ASIST is overworked, but perhaps that is the price of a job well done! We trust we will still be able to count on its most valuable support, even if North Africa lies somewhat outside its geographical scope.

In conclusion, opportunities for employment-intensive works are huge -in infrastructure, environmental projects, historical sites, etc.-, in Egypt as in most countries in Africa and Asia. And the potential benefits of employment-intensive technology is extraordinary; for employment creation, certainly, but also to address a number of priorities of these countries, such as cost-effective and technically sound works, develop SMEs and an entrepreneurship mentality, community self-reliance and responsibilization, and limit the need to import expensive machinery. But these opportunities and this potential still need to receive broader recognition. Ideally, we should achieve a mainstreaming of the "employment-intensive growth" goal into the work of sectoral ministries -agriculture, construction, urban sanitation, etc.- and into the work of some core general policy ministries -economy, finance, planning, etc. This is a key challenge that calls for solid arguments and proofs, and strong partnerships, at all levels, at the micro and macro levels, nationally and internationally.

So we are ready in the ILO Cairo Office to shift gears in our work to promote employment-intensive activities and technologies. We look forward to partnerships there; and indeed look forward to this seminar to provide us with the latest in that area and, in particular, with the invaluable experience which all of you, ladies and gentlemen, carry from your countries.

I thus wish to this seminar and to all of you, full success!