Malaysia's EPF partners with ITC-ILO to establish regional training initiatives

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) in Malaysia has partnered with the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC-ILO, ITC is the training arm of ILO), for the joint implementation and development of training activities in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries.

Officiating the event, EPF chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman said the partnership will facilitate learning and knowledge in social security and retirement issues for ASEAN. "Under this strategic partnership, the EPF will be providing world-class learning infrastructure via the EPF Learning Campus (ELC) as well as offer an in-depth understanding of the region," he commented.

He added that this partnership is only the first of more initiatives in furthering EPF’s agenda to address the needs of an ageing society as well as the social security challenges presented by the gig economy. He explained: "We intend to leverage on more of such collaborations in the future while putting Malaysia on the map as the regional centre of excellence for social protection."

Among the programmes that will be offered in ELC are labour migration; social dialogue, tripartism and labour law; and social protection. Benefiting from these programmes would be government ministries, non-governmental organisations, social welfare agencies, research institutions and the academia.

Present at the signing ceremony were experts, including:

1. Datuk Shahril Ridza Ridzuan, EPF chief executive officer
2. Tunku Alizakri Raja Muhammad Alias, deputy chief executive officer (strategy)
3. Charles Crevier, senior programme Officer, social protection, governance and tripartism, ITC-ILO
4. Nuno Meira Simoes da Cunha, senior technical specialist on social protection, ILO Bangkok.

The EPF first collaborated with the ITC-ILO in August 2016, when they organised the executive course on designing and extending the social protection system in Malaysia. The course was attended by 60 delegates from Cambodia, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia.

Charles Crevier noted that the EPF has been advocating for a more comprehensive social security system. He said: For this, we are pleased to bring our partnership with the EPF one step further, through the cooperation on the design and implementation of tailor-made training activities in the field of social protection policy."

Established in 1964 in Turin, Italy as an advanced vocational training institute, the ITC-ILO has since matured into providing high-level in-service training, and runs more than 450 programmes and projects for a total of around 12,500 people from over 190 countries each year.

Photo / StockUnlimited