The Departments of Labour of Sindh, Punjab, Baluchistan and KP came together to launch the first online portal and database on labour inspection at an event at the ILO Building in Islamabad, with the Canadian High Commissioner, Ms. Heather Cruden, as the Chief Guest.
The online portal, for the first time, brings together information about registered labour factories, inspection staff, inspections conducted, and most importantly, uses this information to track trends and measure performance and progress. All the information is sex-disaggregated and the reports analyse gender differences such as wage discrimination between women and men or the incidence of child labour.
The online portal, has been developed by the ILO under its project on Promoting Gender Equality for Decent Employment (GE4DE), funded by the Canadian Government. It began with an analysis of how conventional labour inspection tools and processes often overlooked the needs and experiences of women in the workplace, and then worked to address this flaw through the development of a gender mainstreamed checklist covering all the provisions of the labour laws, training of users and finally the development of the database.
“The reports that can be generated from this database are very important for the ILO and the government, as they are evidence of the compliance with labour laws and international labour standards that promote decent work”, explained Mr. Francesco d’Ovidio, Country Director of the ILO.