Tackling weakness at employment bureaus [Archives:2004/779/Business & Economy]

Outcomes of recently-meetings of the National Conference on the policy of employment in Yemen have revealed that treating what the employment bureaus suffer of many weakness points. Such weaknesses begin from providing services, which represent the main goal behind founding those bureaus, also the establishment of relationships with employers, coordination with the program on labour market and to exert endeavour for working out and developing a national strategy for labour and employment that help integrate labour issues into the comprehensive development framework.
The conference, organized by the ministry of social affairs and labour in association with International Labour Organisation, came out with certain points aimed at activation of labour market, developing the sector of very small, small and medium companies, enhancement of administrating the labour market and incorporation of concepts related to gender to policies of employment.
Report by the ILO disclosed that employment bureaus in Yemen were unable to provide services they were established for because there is a low number of those registered with the bureaus to get jobs and only 5% of the unemployed is registered with them.
The survey report has considered that annexing the department of employment bureaus to the department of labour inspection at the ministry of social affairs has formed a barrier before activity of the this department and prevented reciprocal relations with employers, in addition to lack of coordination between employment
Figures in the survey mention that out of 15146 registered persons only 2016 have received help from the bureaus in finding jobs and the remainder 13130 stayed without help and got no response to their applications despite that employers reported of their need for the employment of 3070 persons and their demands were not met by employment bureaus.
Advisor to the ILO has defined a number of main areas for effecting change in employment bureaus. The main aspects of change defined by the advisor are the building of new administrative structure to be responsible for them, working for the improvement of information system available at employment bureaus, registering information on employers and workers at data bank, building a database on terms of profession safety and accidents of labour as well as child labour and local activities of social funds.
The conference has recommended the creation of specialised services at the employment bureaus to help those looking for jobs and to face challenges of unemployment by securing around 188 thousand jobs a year in order to reduce unemployment rate by 1%.
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