Dattatreya broaches job issues at BRICS meet

Hyderabad: Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya on Thursday said BRICS nations would soon have a Social Security Agreement (SSA) and exchange better practices in employment generation between them.

A two-day meeting of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) Employment Working Group (EWG) was held on Thursday, which brought out technical papers for discussion in the BRICS labour and employment ministerial meeting, slated to be held in September 27 and 28 in Agra.

The EWG discussed crucial issues, including those on entering SSA between the member-countries and employment generation. This meeting would prepare the technical papers and many of discussions would take place at ministerial meetings in September in Agra, he said, adding, “We, in India, have PM Rozgar Yojana. We can exchange such programs with member countries.”

Dattatreya said, “We have an agreement with 19 countries on SSA including Malaysia and Singapore, with whom we have bilateral agreement. Now, we also discussed about BRICS countries having agreement with India on social security so that our migrant workers can be benefitted.”

The Union Minister further added that the topic of discussions include employment generation for inclusive growth, possible social security agreements amongst BRICS nations and networking of labour institutes of BRICS nations. The Union Minister said government was committed for job security, wage security and social security of workers and the top priority was employment generation.