Unemployment, a threat to security and social peace [Archives:2003/666/Last Page]

Yasser Mohammed Al-Mayyasi
The unemployment problem in Yemen could be the largest of economic problems. Most graduates and students about to graduate, live in fear of unemployment. All this has been aggravated with the increasing birth rate that is the highest in the world.
Specialized researches and academic studies have analyzed the reasons behind this high rate, among which is that graduates' skills do not meet development demands. Another factor is the unavailability of important discipline where available seats are quite limited in number, forcing many of the young to drop out of college and seek better life opportunities for income.
Statistics indicate that 250 thousand students are now studying in public and private universities. All those are with less future prospects and with almost 100% certainty that they would join the segment of the unemployed.
Observers see that unemployment threatens more than 4 million students. The Yemeni labour market yearly receives more than fifty-thousand university graduates, 85% of them carry qualifications that are not demanded in the market. The government, represented by the ministry of higher education, vocational training, and education focused on establishing technical, vocational institutes and also colleges. But the financial resources stand against fulfilling these ambitious projects.
Academicians see that the government never started seriously providing strategic solutions for this social problem that keeps on growing every year. Those academics see that the media fuss on the issue is far from reality of the present that produces every day more surplus workforce. Some see that security deterioration the country has been witnessing during the recent years, such as kidnapping of foreigners and bombings and such acts of viotence , are performed by a number of unemployed youth suffering from this problem and that most of the individuals that commit crimes are those who dropped out of education institutes to search for work but in vain. All these problems lead to frustration that influences their behavior negatively and lead them to skew, and commit harmful acts of crime.
Among the immediate solutions of the government is to work on discharging a great portion of the foreign workforce and substituting them by local labor. Many studies see that unemployment is not limited to university graduates, but also includes workers, technicians and vocational and unqualified labor. All together they pose a time bomb threatening security and social peace.
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