"Illegal employment is big problem in Azerbaijan"

The Azerbaijani-EU joint twinning project "Support to the State Labor Inspection Service toward Improvement of Professional Health and Labor Safety" officially started on Tuesday at the sidelines of the international conference "Labor Safety and Health Management System: Ways of Continuous Improvement."

Azerbaijani Labor and Social Protection Minister Fizuli Alekperov told reporters on the eve of the conference that Azerbaijan will continue to undertake effective steps using the experience of leading countries.

"Like elsewhere in the world, this issue is urgent in Azerbaijan, and we return to it from time to time as we want positive changes in this sphere," Alekperov said.

Illegal employment is one of the greatest problems today, he said.

"It leads to the violation of employees’ rights and, in all, to the absence of such rights. The Government alone can not resolve this problem. We will suggest establishing a new council to include our social partners, principal employers, and large enterprises," Alekperov said.

Under the project, the EU provided technical assistance to the Hygiene and Labor Protection Service and the State Labor Inspection Service.

The EU has assigned 1 million manat for the implementation of this project. The project, which is expected to take 1.5 years, will be implemented together with the Federal Labor and Social Protection Ministry of Germany jointly with the Labor, Family and Healthcare Ministry of the German Federal land Hessen.

Rauf Tagiyev, the chief of the Labor Inspection Service of the Labor and Social Protection Ministry, told the conference that the service’s specialists will be trained at seminars in Europe and the service’s laboratories will be upgraded.

The project includes five components: preparation of technical conditions for professional health and labor safety management system; identification of indicators for professional health and labor safety observation by the inspection; preparation of new documents and professional health and labor safety operating procedures and training labor inspectors to using the procedures; strengthening of professional health and labor safety training potential; and preparation of more efficient communication instruments and identification of technical requirements for onsite visits.

The EU twinning instrument represents an instrument of cooperation, which is designed to help partner countries improve their legal provisions in conformity with the EU legislation. Such an instrument assumes a phase-to-phase reorganization of administrative structures on the basis of European legal standards and practice.

The projects are implemented through efficient cooperation between corresponding state agencies and institutes in countries-beneficiaries and in EU member states.

Attending the conference devoted to the World Labor Protection Day were representatives of governmental and non-governmental organizations, international organizations, embassies, and small- and medium-sized businesses.

April 28 is marked as World Labor Protection Day throughout the world.


/Trend/