Actualités

Advancing social protection and maternity insurance reform in Sri Lanka

From 24-27 January 2025, the ILO organized a tripartite consultation on maternity benefits and a training on social insurance management. These technical sessions provided an opportunity for social dialogue, bringing ILO’s tripartite constituents—government, employers, and workers, including the Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (MoL), as well as key agencies such as the Ministry of Finance, National Planning Department, Employment Trust Fund Board, Social Security Board, and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs to discuss and share their perspectives. These sessions were led by technical specialists, including ILO Senior Social Protection Specialist Ms. Mariko Ouchi, ILO Chief Technical Adviser Mr. Simon Brimblecombe, as well as a Social Security Actuary and Modelling Specialist, Mr. Alexandre Landry.

The sessions provided a platform for enhanced awareness and exploration of potential dimensions of social security and social protection. An actuarial analysis was shared for designing a new maternity insurance scheme. While perspectives differed, participants emphasized the need for transformative actions to remove structural barriers and create an inclusive policy framework, advocating for a contributory maternity insurance scheme. However, views were divided on extending such support to unpaid care work and the unemployed. The government reaffirmed its commitment to further policy discussions on financing the scheme, while employers highlighted the challenges of extending social protection to domestic and community-based workers, who are mainly employed by households and informal employers. Trade union representatives supported extending maternity insurance to the informal sector while acknowledging the initial challenges of formalizing informal workers. Participants also discussed employer liability for high social security costs, including maternity benefits, which are entirely borne by employers in Sri Lanka, contrary to international labour standards that recommend shared responsibility between employers, employees, and the state. A key takeaway from the two-day discussions was the need to expand social protection and maternity insurance to informal sector workers, despite challenges in funding, registration, and formalization.

These activities are part of the ILO’s Care Economy Project: Creating Decent Work Opportunities for Domestic and Community-Based Care Workers through Transformative Actions for Gender Equality in Sri Lanka. The project aims to enhance protections and opportunities in the care sector by designing a new maternity insurance scheme, piloting a digital application to register domestic workers, and developing a comprehensive action plan to promote decent work in the care economy.