The Uzbek tripartite constituents wrote to the Director General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), requesting ILO’s consideration of its Better Work Programme to “further improve the working conditions of garment industry workers, enhance dialogue between employers and employees, implement international labour norms and standards, as well as increasing the competitiveness of garment enterprises and promote economic growth”.

As a follow-up to this initiative, the ILO/International Financial Corporation Better Work Management Group formally sanctioned a feasibility study on 15 January 2022.

On the week from 23 to 27 April 2022 a joint ILO-IFC Better Work mission visited Uzbekistan to discuss the process of the feasibility study  aimed to develop an optimal strategy for supporting the textile industry and involving stakeholders, taking into account the unique Uzbek context. During the mission a number of bilateral meetings were conducted with both national and international partners.

After completion of the feasibility study with its recommendations, the possibilities for follow up actions will be implemented. These may include a series of pilot enterprise level interventions to already test which approaches and tools of the rich pool of Better Work enterprise level work instruments are most useful for textile clusters in Uzbekistan. The concrete follow up actions depend on the outcomes of the feasibility study and its recommendations as well as the availability of resources for implementation.

A potential Better Work programme in Uzbekistan would become an integral part of a new Decent Work Country Programme (DWCP) for Uzbekistan (2021 – 2025).