Hundreds of years ago, the industrial and mass production development in Europe used to demand high number of labour force, in doing so, Europeans mobilized huge number of human labor from all over the world, in different forms, which left millions suffering slavery and forced labor. But now the situation is different. The advancement of science and technology is simplifying man’s day today life, with support of sophisticated technological inputs and its results of machines. Nowadays, the innovations of complex machines and robotics have begun to replace human labor tasks in different aspects.
However, this in turn brought another challenge to human work force, by leaving out millions from employment, which is their means of survival. With other contributing factors, today it can be said that, the problem of unemployment is the question of every nation in the world. In fact, its degree and drawbacks are greater in the developing countries.
As a result of this, countries are forced to give high concern for this issue and working in several ways privately and in collaboration with other countries and development partners, as the issue is common to all.
Based on this ground, the regional conference organized by International Labour Organization (ILO) and the government of Ethiopia for labour based practitioners, which makes its 17th regional conference held in Addis Ababa from 13th November to 17th November at African Union conference center.
The conference was participated by 450 participants from about 27 countries that are African, Asian and Europe. The participants which are representatives of the countries and ministers as well as development partners; during the conference accommodated useful discussions and experiences sharing, with qualified research based presentations, which centrally focuses on the issues of the need for policies that target Job rich and inclusive growth; through conducive investment and infrastructure development, pro-employment and sustainable infrastructure delivery options of technology and innovations, job creation and re-silence in fragile situations and on local capacity building initiatives through south-south cooperation.
The conference centrally focused on the issue of management and development of human labor at national and regional level. To have sounding policy that can reveal the problem of unemployment, especially to foster the potential of the youth generations, in innovation, entrepreneurship and in the way they can be part of the countries development.
For this, focus on labour intensive technologies is advised to gain priority in every aspects of development and investments of the countries. The manufacturing sectors, infrastructure buildings are among top priority given areas by the conference.
Based on this different experiences have been tested; including the efforts undergone in Ethiopia by investing in human labour as part of achieving the sustainable development goal, the Rwanda’s experience from the construction sectors contribution to human labour utilization, the road construction of cobblestone in Tunisia, the labour intensive road construction experiences of Japan and South Africa’s employment opportunity created by green development in roads construction and many other experiences.
The participants also visited different projects and development activities as part of the program, including Bishoftu Automotive Industry, Adds-Adama High Way, the activities of Ethiopian Toll Roads Enterprise and others.
According to the final Statements of the conference, which declared as the Addis Statement, drawing from the overall lesson of the conference and the inspiration from Addis Ababa, Ministerial statement of the government of the FDR Ethiopia’s successive development program as well as the open and frank discussions that took place over the last five days of the seminar; called countries’ governments and policy makers, for realignment of all employment-intensive investment programs to Sustainable Development Goals and the relevant national, regional and global short medium and long term goals, for the creation of an enabling policy environment for adoption and expansion of employment intensive investment programmes, targeting job-rich sectors that are funded by both public and private sectors as well as civic organizations.
And also called to promote employment-intensive approach as a vehicle for promoting the decent work agenda and fostering public-private and public-community partnership, and facilitate the entry of youth, women, and people with disabilities into labour market and give them skills to lead the productive and dignified lives and to increase the cooperation and networking among countries in the region and beyond, in the spirit of south-south cooperation and international solidarity.
Some other strong suggestions for governments and policy makers was encouraging the academic research institutions, to focus on applied research that uses innovative technologies and work methods and offer local solutions for local challenges and learning from regional and global best practices, and promote employment-intensive approach and to mainstream employment-intensive investment approach into the national educational system in order to regularize the accreditation, testing and certification processes as well as improving portability of skills.
Concerning this and other issues during the closing remark, different feed backs and comments have been raised and suggested that, the betterment of creating good collaboration with universities and research institutions should go beyond encouragement and the strong ties, joint stages as well as interactions should be created for the general effort and policy making in particular.
The participants also agreed that to not limit their discussion to talk show, and gave emphasis to take action-full responses on what have been agreed so far and to commit themselves to provide regular updates of national achievements and proven good practices at the Regional seminar for Labour based practitioners and similar forums.
Ethiopian Transport Minister Ahmed Shide in his closing remark said that: “The Conference underscores our government’s top priority to solve the problems of unemployment which is the source of all problems and against our peace and stability” He also congratulated Tunisia, who has been selected to organize the 18th Labour Based Practitioners Conference to be held in 2019.