Direct Request (CEACR) - adopted 2011, published 101st ILC session (2012)

Employment Service Convention, 1948 (No. 88) - Guinea-Bissau (Ratification: 1977)

Contribution of the employment service to the promotion of employment. The Committee notes the general information sent by the Government in a report received in August 2011. The Government indicates that a department has been established within the Ministry of Labour responsible for the formulation and implementation of government employment policy. At the same time, the Government has established an employment centre responsible for the registration of jobseekers. The Committee notes that the new labour department is also required to implement measures aimed at securing full employment and promoting contacts with organizations in civil society in connection with employment. The national employment policy and a paper concerned with national youth policy are being drawn up. In its 2010 General Survey concerning employment instruments, the Committee indicated that the public employment service forms part of the institutions necessary for achieving full employment. Convention No. 88, the Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122), and the Private Employment Agencies Convention, 1997 (No. 181), all three form a necessary building block for employment growth (see 2010 General Survey, paragraphs 785–790). The Committee also refers to the comments which it has been making for a number of years on the application of Convention No. 88. It again expresses the hope that a national employment policy will be adopted soon and that measures will be taken to strengthen employment services intended for young people, including services established outside the capital. It requests the Government to provide further information on the operation of the public employment service and also on the steps taken to strengthen the institutions necessary for achieving full employment. The Committee hopes that the report will contain information on how the establishment of a new department at the Ministry of Labour has enabled the Government to discharge its key task, namely “to ensure […] the best possible organization of the employment market as an integral part of the national programme for the achievement and maintenance of full employment and the development and use of productive resources” (Articles 1 and 3 of the Convention), in cooperation with the social partners (Articles 4 and 5). The Committee requests the Government to indicate the efforts made regarding the collection and analysis of statistics relating to the employment market and to send all available information on the number of public employment offices established, the number of applications for employment received, the number of vacancies notified and the number of persons placed in employment by such offices (Part IV of the report form).

[The Government is asked to reply in detail to the present comments in 2013.]