The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Youth unemployment rate has declined from 9.3% to 7.3% this year according to the Labor Force Survey Report of 2012. The PM in his state-of-the-nation report credited it to good policies, good governance and sustained growth.
It was found that jobseekers aspire d to take up white collar jobs and there is mismatch between expectations and job available, attitude towards the vocational occupations, and lack of experience and skills.
In a certificate awarding ceremony for Heavy Machine Operators, labor minister Dorji Wangdi said there is no blue collar or white collar job in this present world but only knowledge based jobs.
The PM’s recent state-of-the-nation report stated, to provide 60% school leavers with Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET), all the Technical Training Institutes (TTIs) and zorig chusum would be expanded to increase the enrolment capacity to 90% by 2013.
The graduates from TTIs were recruited on campus as TTIs were linked with industries and private sectors.
Special skills development programs (SSDP) for monks, nuns and armed force personnel and village skills development programs (VSDP) were conducted by the government to raise living standards of rural people by imparting functional skills.
The report stated that over 1728 villagers from 175 gewog were trained till April 2012 and 1451 for SSDP.
Bhutan Vocational Qualification Framework (BVQF) and Quality Assurance System had been initiated to improve and regulate TVET system in the country.
The training courses such as plumbing, masonry, carpentry, automobile, and electrical were accredited as of March 2012.
The Employment service center (ESC) under MoLHR referred 1,203 job seekers for employment in private and corporate sectors.
A total of 8,174 registered job seekers were employed in sectors such as hydropower, corporations, private sectors, civil service, Royal Bhutan Police, apprenticeships and direct employment by ESC from July 2011 till June 2012.
Through various programs most of the youths are employed in various sectors (925 Class X and XII and University graduated job seekers were registered and engaged in sectors ranging from three to six months under the Pre-Employment Engagement program).
The program mainly intended to keep unemployed youth engaged in a meaningful way while they waited to be employed.
Against the annual target of 400 apprentices, 105 school leavers have completed the program and 325 apprentices are currently attached with various industries and organization as part of the program.
Unemployed youth interested in business were trained in entrepreneurial skills to equip them with necessary skills to start and manage small businesses.
Through the income generation start-up program grants, 76 youth were financed to start 64 small businesses and 58 youth were financed by financial institutes through credit schemes to start businesses.
“Providing jobs, is the only goal and we will try our best to reduce the unemployment rate,” said Lyonpo Dorji Wangdi.
Lyonchhen’s report stated, 78 trainees, mostly women completed six months of training in tailoring by the end of June; 52 were employed and 15 of them established their own tailor shops. Another 40 women are still undergoing training.
To assure quality-training, regulations for private sectors was established just like Bhutan Medical and Health Science (BMHC) in collaboration with MoLHR which came up with the “Guidelines for the Establishment of Nursing Institutes”.
Who is employed? I have met students who graduated before last year and are still searching for job. If you believe lyoenchen, you can’t believe your eyes. Come out to the field and see if anyone is employed, every fourth person in Thimphu you would meet at random would be employed and other three are unemployed.