Business Report :
A signing ceremony of a landmark Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and 13 public and private universities across Bangladesh was held recently to integrate International Labour Standards (ILS) in Labour Law curricula.
“It is a significant day today as ILO and universities in Bangladesh have joined forces to build capacity of lecturers to integrate International Labour Standards into their labour law curricula, stated A H M Shafiquzzaman, secretary of the Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) said.
Stating the significance of the MoU, the secretary mentioned that the labour law exists so that workers of Bangladesh have access to justice, according to a press release.
“This will be a good foundation to initiate similar capacity building for labour judiciary and inspectors, he said.
Sharing the next steps of the initiative Tuomo Poutiainen, country director, ILO Country Office in Bangladesh said, “This initiative underscores the ILO’s commitment to promoting decent work, built on ILS. We are also pleased to share that several other universities in Bangladesh have expressed interest in joining this initiative, and we anticipate a second cohort signing soon.”
The initiative is a part of the Advancing Decent Work in Bangladesh (ADWIB) project under the Team Europe Initiative (TEI) on Decent Work in Bangladesh funded by the European Union, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
A key component of the project aims at ensuring that Bangladesh’s labour laws align more closely with ILS and that the application of these laws is enhanced.
Representing TEI, Thijs Woudstra, deputy head of Mission of Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Bangladesh, remarked that ILS are a part of human rights and human dignity. Through this partnership, lecturers will be able to capacitate the new generation to create a more socially conscious future.
Syed Sultan Uddin Ahmed, chairperson of Labour Reform Commission recognises that the seeds of change are being planted today, and we need to nurture them, so these seeds can become banyan trees of a just society.
Professor Dr. Mohammad Anwar Hossen, member of UGC, emphasised the need to bridge the gap between law and society in protecting marginalized workers.
