Opportunities for investment in vocational training [Archives:2007/1116/Last Page]
One of the underlying fundamentals of economic development is that the source of one's wealth is one's work, was it the process of value addition through physical work, was it the intellectual efforts excreted into a piece of art or in designing a process, or the ability to take advantage of current resources at hand, including human resources and skills. This is were vocational training comes to mind.
Minister of Vocational Training and Technical Education Dr. Ibrahim Hajri has reiterated that Vocational Training and Technical Education is of extreme relevance to Economic development, as on the micro level, technical education provides the skills and abilities which are required by the job market, thereby giving graduates a direct employability, while on the macro level technical education supplies the labor market with the human resources required by industry, especially given the fact that there are many investments and new corporations to be formed in the country.
The minister also indicated that 65 vocational training institutions were overwhelmed by the demand for education and training, stating that several institutions received far too many enrollment applications, sometimes double the absorption capacity of the institutions, attributing this demand to the increased awareness of the importance of vocational training for the economy, and the rewarding returns for investing in this type of education.
The total number of enrolled students in vocational training institutions for Academic year 2007/2008 reached 24,126, which is around 361 students per institution. Sources at the ministry of vocational training stated that due to the increased demand to enrollment, the ministry has developed a screening process in order to select the most promising students for enrollment, this resulted in the high successful completion rate of 98.7 percent.
The ministry has also devised plans to work in collaboration with the privet sector in order to provide qualified human resources, suiting the needs of industry and business, allowing business to feed into the national five-year strategic plan.
The strategic plan aims at increasing the enrollment of high school graduates to vocational training centers, from the current 5 percent to 7 percent in 2010.
This increase will require the establishment of another 80 vocational training institutes in the country.
The plan also aims at synergizing its components with the industrial development plan, which aims at setting up several specialized industrial zones in coastal areas, in order to provide qualified labor force in close proximity to employability locations.
Yemen has also requested technical cooperation and assistance from neighboring countries in order to help support the vocational training strategic plan, including setting quotas for vocational Yemeni laborers in the job market of Gulf Cooperative Council countries, in order to help Yemen build on its most important and available asset, people.
——
[archive-e:1116-v:15-y:2007-d:2007-12-31-p:lastpage]
