Director-General of International Labour office to visit Moscow

The forthcoming visit by Director-General of the International Labour Office Juan Somavia to Moscow (July 15-19) testifies to the sufficiently high level of cooperation between Russia and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Minister of Labour and Social Development of the Russian Federation Alexander Pochinok said after his meeting with Somavia at the ILO headquarters in Geneva which ended on Tuesday night. On the whole, the Minister assesses this cooperation as "constructive, useful and promising," stressing the importance of progress in the working contacts with the ILO.

In particular, a third two-year programme of cooperation between Russia and the ILO was signed in March 2002. According to the head of the Labour Ministry, the new programme "was prepared very attentively and scrupulously and is of a maximally specific character." Its implementation will help make "serious progress in the field of labour legislation" of the country, carry out the pension reform, and resolve the questions of combating child homelessness and other topical problems of social protection of the population.