Almost fifty participants, members of the Asia Network on the Right to Social Protection (ANRSP) gathered for six days in Manila to discuss the issues decent living income and social protection. With the input from various international experts, like from the ILO, WageIndicator, ITUC and ITUC Asia Pacific, as well as from experiences in the Philippines regarding the state of the health system, two members from each of the eighteen WSM partners from the six Asia countries agreed on elements to be included in a living wage, compared methodologies and applied them in their national context and found current minimum wages largely insufficient.A common position on minimum living wage was drafted by the steering committee members, before the participants went on field visits organized by the WSM Filippino partners to a jeepney union and two public hospitals.
Before the second half of the meeting, which focused on social protection, started, OKRA from Belgium and GK from Bangladesh jointly facilitated a session on the impact of elderly in society and the links it has with social protection. The two other networks in Asia focusing on social protection, the Network for Transformative Social Protection and the Asia Round Table on SP also explained their priorities and how we could complement each other’s work. At the end, plans for the international network on the right to social protection were also discussed as well as the action plan for the years to come and where the network would be advocating. Participants afterwards expressed a 84% satisfaction of the content and how useful it was for them, stating it “helps me a lot to understand the various issues affecting the lives of the people especially in terms of SP and DLI. It helps me to see the whole picture of what kind of SP we have in Asia.”
