The Organisation of Trade Unions of West Africa (OTUWA) has advocated a social protection cover for about 450 million West Africans, representing about 40 percent of the population.
General Secretary OTUWA Comrade John Odah said this while briefing journalists at the sideline of a workshop organised the trade unions Monday in Abuja.
He said this is because of the global attack occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Comrade Odah lamented that the “situation is causing economic meltdown across countries with terrifying inflation, skyrocketing unemployment rate and unleashing severe hardship on families.”
He said provision of a wide social protection coverage would stop the families from falling deeper in to the abyss of poverty.
“In terms of coverage, Africa is at 17% coverage of social protection which is the least the entire world. And when you come to the various sub regions, West Africa is lagging behind with around 13%.
“At the last meeting of the African region directorate of the International Labor Organization, African governments, social partners; that is workers and employers did agreed that we needed to work together to be able to push social protection coverage to a minimum of 40% between 2025 and 2030 to be able to show anything meaningful about the UN SDG.
“So, that is what we are hoping that we will be able to work with social partners and government to push up the funding on social protection from a miserable 1.2% of GDP to a minimum of 10%.
“There are nine branches of social protection: the old age pension, maternity protection, unemployment benefits and others.
“In Nigeria and other countries in the West Africa, we ought to be thinking about providing unemployment benefits, so that individuals even if they are not immediately engaged, can have a means of livelihoods to sustain them. This is what this whole thing about social protection is trying to achieve,” he said.
Earlier in his remarks, OTUWA President Comrade Mademba Sock said: “Our subregion lags behind other regions in the continent and the rest of the world in Social Security and Social Protection coverage for its people.
“This workshop is therefore framed to address how as trade unions in our respective countries, we can join the advocacy for increased funding of Social Protection at our various national levels.
“Other aims of the workshop include to interrogate perspectives for funding extended Social Protection to the citizens of West Africa, to campaign for raising public funding and expenditure on Social Protection to 10% of national GDP in each country of ECOWAS, to Develop Advocacy and Campaign Strategy for extending aggregated Social Protection coverage to at least 40% of the population of West Africa by 2030 among others”
In his presentation, ILO Country Director in Abuja Ms Vanessa Phala said: “Social Protection coverage gap in Africa are associated with significant underinvestment in social protection (excluding health) and 2 percent on public health expenditure (compared to the global average of 12.9 and 5.8 percent, respectively).
“We all must act fast close this huge coverage gap. We are the hood of over 80 percent of African not being covered by social protection”.