The Asian Workers Compensation Association (AWCA), during its virtual 5th General Assembly hosted by the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service on 18 June 2021, confirmed the appointment of Employees’ Compensation Commission Executive Director Stella Zipagan-Banawis as the vice-chair of the organization.
The AWCA is the only regional association dealing with worker’s compensation in Asia-Pacific and plays a pivotal role in the continued exchanges and cooperation among worker’s compensation organizations in the region. It also provides a valuable platform to understand global social trends and to share good practices in partnership with global leading social security organizations like the International Social Security Association (ISSA). Currently, AWCA has 11 member organizations.
The 5th General Assembly also marked the new decade of AWCA as an organization with the signing of the 2021 Declaration of the AWCA.
The declaration provides for the promotion of timely, reasonable and flexible measures
to protect workers from rapid changes in the industrial structure amid the 4th Industrial Revolution and new types of risks, such as COVID-19, maintain the intrinsic function of workers’ compensation even in the midst of social or economic crises and stand in solidarity with workers, employer associations, international organizations and associations and the like for continued development of workers’ compensation systems through unilateral initiatives as well as bilateral and multilateral collaboration, and participation in all forms of activities organized in the name of member organizations, AWCA and its Secretariat, as well as support and promote all agreed arrangements/campaigns based on the spirit of mutual respect and shared responsibility.
In her acceptance message, Banawis expressed her support to the association and thanked the member organizations for trusting ECC. Executive Director Banawis was first appointed to be AWCA’s vice-chair in 2017-2018.
“I’d like to thank the AWCA and our new chairperson, Dr. Mohammed Azman Aziz Mohammed of the Social Security Organization of Malaysia for placing your faith and trust in us. Working with Dr. Azman and his team at SOCSO would be a privilege for us at ECC. AWCA is quite a young organization and therefore has a lot to look forward to”, said Banawis.
