Consultations underway to improve social protection in Region

Regional representatives converged at the CARICOM Headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana, on Monday to discuss measures to improve social protection within the Region.

Social Protection refers to interventions from public, private, voluntary organisation and social networks, to support communities, households and individuals, in their efforts to prevent, manage and overcome a defined set of risks and vulnerabilities.

The Regional representatives are attending a Consultation on the Establishment of a Regional Tripartite Social Dialogue Mechanism and a Regional Social Protection Floor.

At the opening ceremony on Monday morning, Assistant Secretary General, Human and Social Development at the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr. Douglas Slater, said the discussion would feed into recommendations of the CARICOM Strategic Plan. The Plan focuses on strengthening Community governance to achieve social, economic and environmental resilience. According to Dr. Slater, the  Plan clearly articulated the importance of diverse social partners in  traditional Tripartite as well as  ‘Tripartite Plus’ approaches coming together to focus on regional integration and our development agenda.

He added that the Community had recognised the value of social partners who engage in dialogue as a vehicle for building a strong community of stakeholders who could promote effective evidence-based decision-making for policy development, integrated planning, monitoring and evaluation.

It is within this context, that the meeting was seen as one with the potential to explore novel approaches and methods for social dialogue mechanisms, Dr. Slater said.

He also pointed out that the consultations were being convened at a time when the world was focused on the implementation of a global Sustainable Development Agenda in a more holistic and integrated manner. He said it was even more of an imperative that during the consultation that participants interrogate and agree on what constituted decent work and engender a culture of ensuring that the rights for protection of workers were determined regionally.

According to him, the  increased migration of workers intra-regionally, movement in and out of the Region from other jurisdictions, and the new and emerging modalities and configurations of labour in the Region were becoming a huge matter of interest and concern for CARICOM.

The group is expected to discuss a proposed social dialogue mechanism and a regional dimension to social protection with a view to providing recommendations to the Council on Human and Social Development (COHSOD) on labour which is expected to meet in October.

The consultation will include presentations by both the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the CARICOM Secretariat. Member States will be invited to share experiences and best practices with regard to Social Protection. Funding for the event was acquired from the European Union under the European Development Fund (10^th EDF) Programme.