Both private and public sector need helpJobs as precious as ever [Archives:2004/734/Business & Economy]

Multiple variables and many syllabuses have been created by the policy of economic and financial reforms since 1995 that have impacted rates of growth and affected the labour market in Yemen.
On this occasion of the World May Day we would like to link the population growth rate in our country, estimated at 3.7%, to indicators of a rise in the numbers of workforce in the market, and its reflection on available job opportunities, as well as what must be done to reduce unemployment.
The government has tried to tackle the structural disorders in the economy in record time, and has implemented a program for economic and financial reform with the aim of enhancing trust in our gross national economy, attracting investments, increasing the gross national product, reducing debt, taking measures for halting fluctuations of exchange prices and reducing inflation to less than 10%.
But the efforts to help the industrial and agricultural sector remain weak and that has hurt the labour market. There is a shortage in training and qualification of work forces, despite the fact that the government has raised the ceiling of its investment expenditures and finished projects characterized by intensive labour.
What has increased unemployment is the retreat of both public and private sectors in providing job opportunities. That situation has created a real problem in the growing of the labour market, and that has led to spread of new cases of poor groups in the society and each individual, according to field studies; become bearing the living costs of a medium of four members out of economic sustenance, in addition to spending on himself.
The government has not stood with its hand folded before on this situation. It has launched the social safety net, supported funds of social development and care and adopted projects to fight poverty and developing small industries.
It has also supported the fund for fish and agricultural encouragement and smaller lending program and other measures aimed at alleviation of unemployment and finding opportunities for those capable of work in the market.
By considering deeply the policy of economic and financial reforms we should judge through it what the government has traversed of distances in the social area and treatment of labour market.
Indicators show that reforms were concentrated on founding solutions to structural defects while available work opportunities remained low, especially that the efforts exerted for improving the conditions of the unemployed were confined to partial solutions and short-term and temporal programs.
On the occasion of the World Labour Day we can talk with transparency about requirements of the labour market where there are squandered human resources. There a need for speeding up the rate of economic and financial reforms to stop the chronic deficit in the state's general budget and appropriation of part of it for expansion in the process of training and qualification of the workforces, as well as working for activating investment and pushing the private sector to adopt intensive work strategic projects.
If there are qualified and trained work forces in various areas and there are strategic projects the labour market would get flourished and we would be able to market and export Yemeni labour to neighborly markets in a regular and studied way founded on specialization and responding to demand for local and external job opportunities.
We would point out that there is another problem at the labour market represented in the increase in number of groups graduated from government and private universities. They are waiting employment opportunities. These are in need for strategic plans for accommodating them at the public and private sectors according to their specialties.
The whole question requires preparation of surveying study to know their volume and need for them in different areas.
No doubt the government's programs and plans have accommodated many groups of unemployed and provided tens of thousands of opportunities for the labour market forces, but the increase in the rates of population growth and outputs of university education require exertion of more efforts to improve conditions of workers, as they are the builders of the homeland and represent leaders of the active movement in the society.
The attention paid to them should not be confined to an honoring just ceremony, but it must find comprehensive solutions to their problems.
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