Улаанбаатар
Improvement of social protection services for herders discussed with FAO
Society
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ On July 20, Minister of Labor and
Social Protection A.Ariunzaya met with Resident Representative of the United
Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Mongolia Vinod Ahuja to
discuss the ‘Support to employment policy for promoting job creation in Mongolia’ project
funded by the European Union, FAO's ‘Extending social protection to herders with
enhanced shock responsiveness’ project as well as the areas of further
cooperation.
The 4-year project 'Support to employment policy for promoting job creation in Mongolia’ will be completed after 6 months. Mr. Vinod Ahuja said EU deems that Mongolia has gained considerable experience in developing policies that boost employment and job creation with the implementation of the project that greatly supports the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection.
He also stressed that, under FAO projects and programs aimed at boosting employment, much emphasis has
been placed on attracting investments to support business-people and employment
and that the two sides can jointly support youth employment through
agriculture. Incidentally, the organization plans to start a number of food brands as part of
the project.
An important issue the sides touched upon during the meeting was the improvement of social protection services for herders. In particular, they emphasized the importance of the Government being more attentive towards the issue in the future since that would make it possible to prepare for some shocks in advance, while talking about how there is no official mechanism for having all of the herders covered by social insurance and how they are becoming highly vulnerable to shocks by being left out of the social insurance system.
