Impediments limiting,The private sector’s contribution to curb unemployment [Archives:2004/743/Business & Economy]

The Yemeni government is intending during the next period to attract more investments by the local, Arab and foreign private sector for implementing strategic projects aimed at stirring up the slowness in the process of investment and founding solutions for the problem of unemployment.
A modern study on the labour market in Yemen mentions that employment at the private sector has become more preferable that the government positions due to the high rate of wages at the private sector compared to the public sector. But the study adds that that the private sector hesitates in training and rehabilitation of the national cadre for fear of abandoning their jobs which may affect the level of its production and exposes it to financial losses that the sector spends on training and habilitation of local labour.
The study adds that technical specialties and business management required by the private sector constitute till now a small proportion of the graduates present at the labour market where they are estimated at 7% compared to specialties in geography at 20%, Islamic studies by 35%, history and psychology by 15%, arts by 15% and sciences by 8%.
The study also affirms that the private sector can provide the labour market with 20% of job opportunities but shortage in expertise and skills among the local labour does not provide opportunities for employment at the private sector, especially in areas of convertible industries. The study also indicates that there is a possibility of obliging the private sector of accommodating a certain percentage of unemployment under what is called Yemenisation of jobs. But the private sector refuses to have obligatory employment conditions imposed on it and that requires cooperation between government institutions and the private sector in the field of employing the local labour.
As a result of speedy growth of Yemeni labour market there is a necessity of diversifying the economic activity to encounter the problem of unemployment and motivating the private sector to accept a certain proportion of labour to work for it.
Official sources, however, confirm there are government policies aimed at increasing investment in human development and deepening the course of reforming the institutions to facilitate the process of employing labour at the private sector.
Here there attention must be given more to outputs of technical education and vocational training to meet the need of the labour market for technical specialties and that would contribute to alleviate unemployment in the market.
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