1

ECOP’S BUSINESS FORUM ON THE JOB CRISIS

27 August 1998

by:

W. R. Böhning

Director

ILO Multi-disciplinary Team Southeast Asia and the Pacific

I am honoured to join you today and to speak at the opening ceremony of your Business Forum on the Job Crisis.

On behalf of the ILO, I would like to extend my greetings to the officials of ECOP and to the representatives of business and politics. ECOP could not have chosen a more appropriate theme for a meeting than Fostering a Business Environment Conducive to Job Saving and Creation . In a period of uncertainty, your initiative deserves the support of all sectors of society, as well as of the ILO.

Every day there are reports on how severe the economic shock has been in many countries in the Asia Pacific region. Most of the laid-off workers, who cannot be re-employed in the formal sector, must seek to survive in the rural and urban informal sector. Many of the workers and their families are condemned to live close to or below the poverty line. But we need not be without hope: not in the Philippines, and not if ECOP focuses on saving and creating jobs! Knowing the Filipinos proverbial capacity for endurance, I know they will always survive adversity, and will continue to struggle to keep the country economically afloat.

ILO is deeply appreciative of the Filipino approaches and initiatives. With the active participation of the Employers under ECOP, you have set a new milestone in labour - management cooperation through the Social Accord. Other countries in the region would do well to emulate your example in these trying times. In addressing the issue of unemployment and poverty, one of ILO s initiatives - both in Indonesia and here in the Philippines - has been to make available its expertise in labour-based equipment - supported techniques. Our aim is to change administrators and contractors habits of preferring equipment over workers. Dozens of ILO projects in over two decades have demonstrated that, under certain conditions, you can employ twice, three or four times the number of workers without loss of quality and without loss of profits. ILO has started to talk to the Philippines government and social partners in order to induce changes in administrators and contractors habits. I am pleased to inform you that, earlier this week, our engineer specialist and I had the great pleasure of meeting various representatives of government agencies and workers. We resolved to organize an inter-agency workshop with the programmatic title Removing the obstacles to labour-based infrastructure programmes . It is planned to be held early November this year. I am sure, ECOP and the business sector will be involved in these deliberations in the true spirit of tripartite cooperation.

ILO and the Department of Labor and Employment have designed, since the beginning of this year, a project to help enterprise development and the basic social protection in the urban informal sectors of Metro Manila, Davao and Zamboanga. The Secretary of DOLE, Mr. Laguesma, last week endorsed the project,

which is assured of UNDP funding, to NEDA - to seek NEDA’ s blessings. Implementation of the project, if approved by NEDA, could start within months. The project s approach should lend itself to widespread replication.

ILO also stands ready to lend its expertise, based as it is on comparative experience, to the National Anti-Poverty Commission’ s activities.

Still, we know that the best way to fight unemployment and poverty is to create remunerative and sustainable employment. That is the theme to be developed at this forum.

I wish you all success in your deliberations!

H:\WRB\SPEECHES\ECOP.W61