WASHINGTON, JAN 25: The World Bank has praised the public works programme in South Asia despite the inadequate safety nets in the region, including the one initiated in Maharashtra. "The Maharashtra Employment Guarantee Scheme have met with considerable success and have been analysed in some detail by a number of Bank studies," the WB said in the study titled `Social Protection Strategy: From Safety Net to Springboard'."Around 70-75 per cent of the total population lives in rural areas and many, being poor, are vulnerable to even marginal income fluctuations. Vulnerability and poverty combine to foster insecurity," the study said.It points out that a very strong co-relation of poverty and vulnerability in the region is the fact that a large majority of the workers are in the informal sector, where they find mainly subsistence employment and are exposed to high risks of unemployment.Added to that are the risks of unemployment and underemployment and their linkage to poverty which makes the labour market a primary concern for governments, the bank said, adding the attention received by the labour markey are the issues of core labour standards and child labour.
