The Role of Labour in Social Protection

A two-day conference on Social Protection opened today in Belize City. The conference is the second in a four-part series between the Ministry of Human Development and a number of partners, including UNICEF, ILO and the World Bank. It focuses on improving dialogue and generating commitments to strengthen the Belizean social protection system so that the poor and vulnerable have access to education, health and other services. The Ministry of Labour led today’s discussion with private sector partners about improving conditions for this sector of society to make them competitive. At a media breakfast meeting, a panel shared more about this initiative.

Sharon Young

Sharon Young, C.E.O., Ministry of Labour & Local Government

“In this workshop we want t explore those inter-relationships; how labour supports our social protection systems and specifically we wanted to have a discussion and some more elaboration of how we transition people off of social protection systems into a state of employability. So, that is a timely discussion in the context of all the changes we are seeing. Globally, we are looking at many factors that influences labour and the labour force. So, we want to take a keen look at those in the upcoming discussions. So, for example, we have some presentations from the social security board on the changing nature of work and how the reforms at social security will contribute in supporting the changing nature of work. We also have presentations from the SIB on the labour force survey that they do every year. Some of the information is glaring, while we have seen a decline in the unemployment rate from 2014 to now – I think it was fourteen percent and it is at nine percent up to last year. So, we want to understand what is the reason that is spurring that decline and how we can tap into that a little bit more and exploring some of those and leverage those factors.”