[ad_1]
Countries in Asia and the Pacific should see the pandemic as a call to strengthen their poor social security networks, the head of the UN labor agency said.
In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, Guy Ryder, director general of the International Labor Organization (ILO), said COVID-19 had highlighted the need for “much stronger” social protection in the region, where border restrictions and business closures continue to hurt. two years after the start of the pandemic.
“Whether or not this is done properly, I think COVID has been part of the problem of having the necessary resilience to deal with the pandemic and to deal with it,” Ryder said.
Ryder added that it was not his place to judge whether some countries’ public health responses were better than others, believing that Asia-Pacific needs to be better prepared for “future shocks” that could come from public health or other crises.
“When restrictions are imposed, when people are unable to go to work, when they are unable to work, at all or in the normal way, then it is clear that you need to put in place compensatory measures to help workers’ incomes, to help companies,” said the UN chief.
Many countries in Asia and the Pacific spend less than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on social protection, excluding health care, according to an ILO 2020 report, which is far from the global average of 11%.
Many Asia-Pacific countries have reported fewer deaths in the pandemic than Western countries, but ongoing regional border controls and trade restrictions have resulted in high social and economic costs.
Although the emergence of the Omicron variant has accelerated the movement of some Western countries to live with the virus (due to the greater transmissibility of the variant and its mild severity than previous strains), many The Asia-Pacific economies have slowed down or delayed their reopening steps.
In recent weeks, the economies of mainland China, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore have tightened their borders. Mainland China, Hong Kong and South Korea have also imposed internal controls, ranging from school closures to blockades and business restrictions.
Despite the high vaccination coverage, Asia-Pacific was largely closed to travel even before the new variant appeared.
In October, regional travel fell by 92.8 percent compared to the same period in 2019, While European and North American air traffic fell by 51 percent and 57 percent, respectively.
Ryder said, however, that he believed the pandemic would not lead to the continued disintegration of connectivity and globalization in the Asia-Pacific.
“My opinion is that we are not on the verge of globalization, we are not on the path to globalization, I would not want to see these things, I do not think it would be beneficial for any population. I think we could consider it,” he said.
“I don’t see ourselves being, if you will, projected into a trajectory of deglobalization or recession, not because of the impact of COVID’s labor market on the world of work.”
‘Right direction’
Ryder said that although the global economy is “moving in the right direction,” he expressed concern that the pandemic recovery was uncertain and unbalanced.
In the same Forecasts for 2022 were released earlier this weekThe ILO predicted that global employment would not return to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2023. The UN agency predicted that the shortage of working hours this year would be equivalent to 52 million full-time jobs, down from previous forecasts, with the differences below. between countries “increasing and prolonging the detrimental impact of the crisis”.
“While those in higher-income countries predict the standard of living, the level of production they knew before the pandemic, is not the case for developing countries, it is not the case for emerging economies,” Ryder said.
[ad_2]
Source link
