Fellowship Study Visit on Employment Insurance (EI), Tokyo, 8-9 November 2011

Background

While the impact of the global economic and financial crisis has been large on the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the region has rebounded remarkably. However, employment creation is estimated to have occurred at a slower path, and the crisis has definitely slowed down the declining trend between 2003 and 2008 in the share of workers in vulnerable employment (60 per cent of the workforce).

Among the ASEAN member States, Thailand and Viet Nam have already in place an unemployment insurance scheme, while Malaysia is launching a feasibility study to design an unemployment insurance system (September 2011 to April 2012). 

Experience gained from Japan, where UI cash benefits and where employment services, such as vacancy information, job matching, vocational training, and other Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) are provided to the unemployed, shows that this combination is the most efficient way to protect the unemployed against poverty on one hand, and to support them to return to employment on the other hand. This why the linkage to integrate the two mechanisms into one under Employment Insurance (EI) as a single window service should be reinforced in Viet Nam, Thailand and considered in Malaysia.

Objectives

i)   To enrich the knowledge and understanding of the participants on the topic of employment insurance by learning from Japan’s good practices on providing support to unemployed, especially the link between UI cash benefits with employment and vocational training services, as a single window service.

ii)  To learn from the Japanese employment insurance scheme’s historical development, institutional arrangements, current coverage and performance as well as challenges in the implementation.

iii) To contribute to create a network of experts on unemployment insurance, employment and vocational training services among the ASEAN region, these experts/officials are currently implementing the employment insurance scheme or are in the stage of designing the scheme in their respective countries.

 

Programme

Report

Presentations:

Session 1: Employment Insurance in Japan, by Mr Masayuki Nomiyama

Session 2: Services provided by EI Scheme and Chart , by Mr Kiichiro Yoshimura                

Session 3: EI Scheme in the context of current and anticipated challenges, by Mr Kiichiro Yoshimura

Session 4: Public Vocational  Training, by Mr Hirotake Iida

Session 5: Hello Work Today, by Mr Tadao Mizutani

Session 6: Introduction Hello Work  Kawasaki and Its Services for Job-Seekers, by Hello Work Kawasaki

 

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