Set to host the BRICS summit this year, China is planning to make a skills-training action plan with other members of the five-nation grouping in a bid to eradicate poverty and enhance cooperation of labour and employment research organizations.
“China plans to get rid of poverty and build a moderately prosperous society by 2020. Skills training is one of the approaches for meeting the challenging target,” Hao Bin, an official of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said.
“Poverty is also a problem for other BRICS states. We hope we can work with others to draft an initiative or action plan to lift people out of poverty with the help of skills training,” he said.
Hao, who is the ministry’s director of international cooperation, was speaking at the 2017 First BRICS Employment Working Group Meeting, a preparatory meeting for a conference of labour and employment ministers of BRICS countries, which will be held in Chongqing in July.
The action is aimed to get rid of poverty and enhance cooperation of labour and employment research organizations so that developing countries have a greater voice in global governance, Hao said.
“With inadequate capacity in labour and employment research, developing countries have a weak voice in global governance compared with Western countries,” he said.
He said the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — need to harmonize their positions on a series of common concerns that have arisen with technological innovation – for example, the unbalanced labour structure, how to protect the rights and interests of labourers, and the sustainable development of the social security system.
Steven Kapsos, head of data production and analysis at the International Labor Organization, said, “In comparison with the rest of the world, the BRICS region has seen a much larger structural transformation since 2000, which has led to a higher share of employment in industry and an increasingly skilled workforce.
“By 2020, we project that 17 per cent of BRICS workers will be in high-skilled occupations, up from around 10 per cent in 2000. Skills and education policies must take these trends into account to ensure that workers in BRICS countries have the skills that are in demand in the labour market,” he said.
He added that the informal economy – sectors that are not taxed or monitored – is “another significant challenge” in some BRICS countries.
“Where data are available, the informal economy represents a considerable, although wide-ranging, share of the labour market,” he said.
Representatives of other BRICS nations also called for enhanced cooperation in information sharing to deal with the new situation, the Daily said. China will host the BRICS summit in Xiamen city in September this year.
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