social dialogue should be encouraged. So, this is an issue of concern for us and we have appealed to the PM to make sure that social dialogue is being used because it has been proven as an e ective tool for coming out of the crisis stronger and more resilient, and [to] build a more egalitarian and cohesive society. NMS: The Industrial Relations Code also considerably reduces the scope of protection against arbitrary retrenchment, closure and layo s as the employer needs to seek government permission to re employees only if it employs more than 300 workers. This means that a majority of workers in this country will be subjected to a hireand re policy. What is the ILO’s take on this? CV: The guidance we follow in advising governments when this question comes up is convention 158 on termination of employment. All of these standards are the products of tripartite consultations at [an] international level. It doesn’t require at all that the governments give permission for collective redundancy. It calls for two things: the government to be noti ed and workers to be consulted. The government needs to be noti ed because massive redundancies of that type will have tremendous impact on the community it has a ected. So, this would call for a public response and public management of the consequence of such massive redundancy plans. This is why notifying the government would be enable the government to anticipate and take the measures required to accompany the workers during that period. The second requirement about the workers consultation is also to engage with workers in consultation ahead of the redundancy plan to look for all possible alternative measures. What can be done to avoid the redundancy and the secondly what should be done to accompany the redundancy. One should be driving any public policy response based on how can we, as a state, protect our workers from poverty. The near intention of the convention on these types of issues is to ensure that not only the individual employer, but also the state together take a number of