Country: Cambodia
Closing date: 05 May 2017
I. Background
The ILO Country Office for Thailand, Cambodia and Lao People’s Democratic Republic is looking for a consultant or team of consultants to contribute to the ILO’s work on improving and expanding social protection and occupational health and safety in Cambodia’s construction sector. The projects aim at identifying drivers and constraints for advancing these two goals in specific supply chains.
The consultancy is a joint intervention of the ILO projects on Enhancing Occupational Safety and Health Standards in the Construction Sector in Cambodia (KHM/17/01/JPN), Social Protection for Informal Workers (KHM/16/04/OEC) and Supporting the Implementation of Sustainable Social Protection Floors for Workers and their Families in ASEAN (RAS/15/51/ROK). The consultant(S) will work closely with the ILO’s OSH Chief Technical Advisor and Social Protection Technical Officer for Cambodia with technical backstopping of the relevant technical specialists of the Decent Work Support Team based in Bangkok.
As a labor-intensive industry, construction has traditionally provided an important entry point into the labour market for landless and unskilled workers. The recent construction boom in Cambodia has created new jobs and attracted a new workforce, namely women.[1] Unlike in the garment manufacturing sector, where women have traditionally been more active, the construction sector is much more prone to industrial accidents and injuries, and its workers are amongst the most vulnerable to ill health and poverty in case of maternity, disease, unemployment, disability, or old age, for lack of any form of social protection. In particular, the construction sector is associated with a disproportionally high share of serious work-related accidents and fatalities: the ILO estimates that one in five fatal accidents at work happen on a construction site.[2] Poor living and working conditions reflect the absence or lack of enforcement of labour and social regulation covering workers in this sector.
Consequently, the construction sector has been identified by the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training (MoLVT) as a priority sector for this intervention. The ILO agrees on the large-scale potential of this sector to facilitate decent work and poverty reduction for both women and men. However, the construction sector as a whole is not a homogeneous group The industry is characterized by complex sub-contracting arrangements, some of these sub-contractors may be formal enterprises, but many MSMEs operate in the informal sector. Individual workers tend to be engaged on a casual basis and without written contracts, which makes for low and irregular incomes. Many informal workers lack personal identification and bank accounts.These differences and atypical working arrangements can be of particular importance when it comes to accessing statutory benefits as traditional systems of formal social protection tend to rely on defined and stable employer-employee relationships.
A value chain “describes the full range of activities that are required to bring a product or service from conception, through the intermediary phases of production and delivery to final consumers”.[3] This includes activities such as design, production, marketing, distribution and support services, up to the final consumer and are thus often divided among several businesses. A sector, on the other hand, refers to areas of the economy in which business share the same or related products or services. Sectors are broader than value chains, and within sectors we often find several value chains. For example, within commercial and institutional building construction, there are value chains for plumbing, electrical, glass and woodwork contractors, amongst many others.
Value chains are part of wider market systems which include a number of actors providing ‘supporting functions’ to businesses in the core value chain, as well as actors who set and enforce ‘rules’ about how value chain actors operate. Other key components of the market system are the ‘rules of the game’, which govern the way that actors in the value chain operate. These include labour legislation, regulations at all levels of government, quality standards and government policies and the degree to which these are enforced.
The Rapid Market and Supply Chain Assessment (RMA) intends to generate evidence on the construction market system in Cambodia. The research will borrow from the methodology employed to carry out value chain research and analysis with a particular focus on improving social conditions, including OSH and social protection.
II.Objective
The objective of the assignment is to:
i. Conduct an RMA to map the Cambodian construction market system and produce a longlist of the most relevant value chains within it, ranked according to their potential to advance the project’s dual goal of expanding OSH and social protection, for the latter specifically Employment Injury Insurance (EII).
ii. Conduct a value chain analysis (VCA) of the selected value chain with an OSH and social protection risk assessment. The VCA will include an identification of the dynamics and constraints in the value chain as well as an identification of the social protection, occupational safety and health risks faced by workers at the different stages of production and a sense of what the underlying factors are.
The objective of these tasks is to provide a comprehensive overview of the value chain and its market environment, as well as to single out areas of possible performance (implementation and administration) issues related to OSH and social protection in the selected supply chain.
III.Timeframe
Duration: 40 days from the signing date, with completion of deliverables no later than September 31, 2017.
Expected places of travel: Home-based for preparation and report writing. Two missions to Phnom Penh and other locations as required.
IV.Requirements
At least 10 years post Master’s relevant experience working in developing countries with substantial experience working on value chain development, particularly in South East Asia.
Strong analytical capacity, including the ability to analyze and articulate differences of positions among various stakeholders and develop acceptable solutions.
Experience with the ILO Guide on Value Chain Development for Decent Work is a plus.
Previous work experience in working conditions, specially sound understanding of OSH and social protection in developing country settings. Record of work with the construction industry is a plus.
Previous work experience with the ILO or other multi-lateral organizations is desirable.
Excellent English writing, communication and presentation skills.
Ability to work independently to coordinate the research project with the local team.
Capacity to produce high-quality reports.
V.Selection Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated based on the cumulative analysis of the:
A. Proposer qualifications and experience 20%
B. Technical proposal 40%
C. Project costs 20%
D. Implementation plan and schedule 20%
VI.Details of payment The budget for the research is USD 40,000, all inclusive.
How to apply:
This proposal is open to individual consultants and groups of consultants. Interested parties should request the detailed TORs and submit technical and financial proposals (no longer than 15 pages total) to the contact emails provided below by May 5th, 2017 at 12:00 Phnom Penh time.
Betina Ramirez Lopez ramirezlopez@ilo.org
Malika Ok malika@ilo.org