PH urged to create unemployment insurance

Southeast Asian countries should increase protection of workers whose jobs are dependent on the environment amid the impact of climate change, said the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which also called on the Philippines to speed up the process of developing an unemployment insurance program.

This, as about 11.5 million or 27.1 percent of workers in the Philippines are in “environmentally-linked sectors,” the OECD said in a report titled “Towards Greener and More Inclusive Societies in Southeast Asia” released last week.

In the fisheries sector alone, OECD said workers in this segment represented 4.6 percent of total employment in the Philippines, the highest ratio in the region. These workers, the report noted, tend to have lower earnings and are more informal and less educated than the rest of the workforce.

“As part of strengthening social protection, countries currently developing unemployment insurance programs (i.e. Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and the Philippines) are encouraged to accelerate the process in order to increase worker protection as soon as possible,” OECD said.

“Countries also need to continue efforts to include informal workers in their social protection systems and facilitate their contributions,” the group added.

The Philippines is located in the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire” and along the Pacific typhoon belt, making it vulnerable to frequent earthquakes and storms that, scientists said, have become stronger and destructive through the years due to climate change.

There are several bills filed in 2022 in both Houses of Congress that seek to create an unemployment insurance program in the country. However, these proposed legislations have yet to hurdle the committee-level.

OECD noted that an unemployment insurance system for workers affected by the green or just transition is under development in the Philippines, and short-term financial payments are available for Filipino workers displaced by climate-related natural disasters.

”In the absence of national unemployment insurance, climate/disaster recovery support or green transition relief for the affected workers could serve as a temporary solution in the nearer term,” OECD said. —IAN NICOLAS P. CIGARAL INQ