India has asked the United States to formally commence the negotiations on Totalisation Agreement -- which once signed would benefit lakhs of Indian who are working in America and paying social security but are unable to get any benefit out of it.
India's Labour and Employment Ministar Mallikarjun Kharge during his talks with US Labour Secretary Hilda Solis pointed out that Indian professionals were paying huge amounts
as social security contributions without being able to draw any benefits as they were not allowed to stay long enough to qualify.
"It would be mutually beneficial to work out a
suitable reciprocal arrangement to avoid the hardship of double payment of social security," Kharge told Solis.
Kharge was leading a delegation, which include
Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar and Labour Secretary P C Chaturvedi. Besides Solis, the US team was represented by Deputy Under Secretary Sandra Polaski and Senior Advisor Sudha
Haley.
The Minister also asked the US to recognise that India had achieved significant progress towards comprehensive social security coverage.
He invited Solis to visit India and see some of the social programmes that the Ministry of Labour and Employment was implementing.
The two leaders discussed the impact of the economic downturn on employment and spoke about some of the key measures that the two governments had taken to mitigate the social impact of the crisis.
They agreed that policies for providing social
protection also created jobs and to follow up the
recommendations developed by the G20 ministers this week.
They also discussed future bilateral cooperation, including ways that the two countries can share technical expertise on a range of issues, including skills development.
Kharge, who would leave Washington Friday morning, was attending the meeting of G-20 Labour and Employment Ministers.
The two-day meeting concluded Wednesday with a set of recommendations that called the G-20 nations for accelerated job creation to ensure sustained recovery and future growth.
Participants of the meeting showed keen interest in innovative Indian schemes of inclusive growth and praised its Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and
Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana.