The Bhutanese Leading the way.
One of the new approaches of the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (MoLHR) to address unemployment in the 12th FYP has been one of their plans to institute an Employment Responsibility System (ERS).
“Employment Responsibility System (ERS) is one of the economic points that is covered under the National Employment Policy 2030.The ERS has been identified as one of the main strategies that the government will adopt to generate more employment opportunities. The government aims to facilitate the job creation by the private sector through the ERS,” said the labour minister, Ugyen Dorji.
The labour minister Lyonpo Ugyen Dorji provided an update during the Friday press meet on the status of the formulation of the system. He said the discussions are still at the cabinet level in regard to the ERS. The cabinet has recommended that the system needs further fine tuning and deliberation for the cabinet to endorse the proposed system.
Lyonchhen (Dr.) Lotay Tshering said that the labour minister tried his best to convince the cabinet last week; however, the cabinet felt that there still is more wanting from the package to convince them enough to investment resources on it. “We had to bluntly tell the labour minister that there are lots of areas for improvement. From here on, expert teams and specialists headed by their concern ministries will work on the small activities of the project and then there will be a couple of presentations during the Dhensa meet held during Fridays. So only after proper refinement, another attempt can be made to present to the cabinet.”
Lyonchhen added that as per the pledge, the government also wanted to have an employment board as an authority that will generate and give jobs. “So right now, we are requesting the labour minister to marry the Employment Responsibility System and the employment board that we have pledged. Although we are aware that the Lyonpo Ugyen Dorji is working really hard, he still needs to do some more homework,” said Lyonchhen.
As pledged by the government to identify and list the country’s skills needs and design a program to train youth for employment, the labour minster said that the establishment survey that was carried out in 2017 already identified the skills and experts for the next five years, and the ministry is working on that.
“In addition to that, we have also started to work in technical collaboration with Asian Development Bank to identify the skill needs for the economic sectors within the country for the next 10 -15 years.”
He added that in the same package, the ministry also proposed to include the study of the skill needs not just within the country but also explore other developed countries like Japan, Australia, and Switzerland among other advanced countries. “We intend to continue the overseas employment program. So identifying the skill needs and designing programs are already on the roll. The critical skills development program is already approved, which will be taken care by the ministry.”
The government’s pledge to review the national youth policy and implement a national youth action plan to address the needs of our youth was made under the 25 pledges in 120 days. So, during the Friday press meet which also coincided with the government’s completion of 120 days in the office, the labour minister updated that the Department of Youths and Sports under Ministry of Education is in the process of reviewing the policy, after which a detailed action plan can be framed.
“The labour ministry will work in collaboration with the Ministry of Education as it is still in the reviewing process. However, on the pledge to review the employment policies, the ministry has already started to work with the technical assistant from the World Bank to review the employment policy for the next one year. So, we have already started with the works.
