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MoE will fill 13,000 vacant posts: Press Dept.
AT-KABUL: Deputy Minister for Youth at Ministry of Information and Culture, Kamal Sadat, urged the government to fill the vacant positions through vacancy advertisements in order to provide jobs to the unemployed youth.
“According to reports there are over 25,000 vacant positions in different governmental organization. Therefore, the government shall fill the vacant posts to provide jobs to the unemployed young Afghans,” said the deputy minister.
He said that there is a workforce of 12 million of which four million are jobless. According to the deputy minister for youth, joblessness is a biggest challenge for youth to deal with. Thus, he urged the governmental organizations to coordinate their efforts with the youth department of Ministry of Culture and Information to begin recruitment process for the vacant positions.
The deputy chief of the Press Department of Ministry of Education, Abdul Saboor Ghofrani, said that efforts are on table to speed up the process of identifying the vacancies to announce it soon.
He said the ministry has taken different steps to help young people to find jobs.
The Ministry of Education has established technical and vocational training centers in different provinces to train youths according to the needs of job market. “It is necessary to deal with unemployment and utilize young population for development of the country,” Ghofrani said.
He said that training of local people is imperative to run the state machinery effectively while filling the vacuum left by foreigners in the country. Scores of foreigners worked and are working on different positions in Afghanistan.
Chief of the Human Resources at the Ministry of Culture and Information, Ahmad Zia Anwari, said that 37 posts area lying vacant in the ministry and pledged that within three months qualified people would be interviewed to fill the positions.
Pointing to the employment process, he said that besides problems related to the procedure the ministry also has to deal with nepotism to make the recruitment process transparent and fair.
This week, Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs said the unemployment rate is above 40 per cent.
“Although there is no new survey regarding unemployment rate, but it can be above 40 percent in the country,” Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Nasrin Oryakhil said on last Sunday.
She said that based on a survey conducted in 2014, work force estimated 15 million in Afghanistan.
She stated that 8.5 million work forces are willing to work where only 3.5 find jobs and the rest have full time job.
“Lack of implementation of labor law is another challenge in the country,” she added.
Providing job opportunity is the top agenda for the government, thus, the ministry exerts utmost efforts to boost up employment facilities in the country in future, the minister highlighted.
“Afghan delegation met with Saudi Arabia officials to send laborers to Saudi,” she noted.
She added that in order to train professional laborers, the ministry will establish 46 vocational training centers.
“We are also working to empower three million women and provide them with job opportunities in next ten years.”
Head of Labor Union Maroof Qaderi, said that the government must pave the ground for investment in the country to fight joblessness.
He urged the government to reactivate factories and step up efforts to extract mines.
Deputy Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Industries Khanjan Alokozai said that private investment could be a good alternative to overcome unemployment challenges.
He said that private sector was willing to invest, but insecurity and kidnapping issue is the main problem before invest mentors in the country.
In January, the Democracy International (DI) in its annual report revealed that majority of youth sees unemployment and poverty as a major problem in the country.
The survey covered 4,020 young Afghans, aged 18-25 years. Fifty percent of the respondents were males. The survey covered 402 villages in 34 provinces of the country.
Chief Technical Advisor for DI, Zekria Barakzai, said that findings of the survey show that 82 percent of respondents see unemployment and poverty as a key challenge across the country.
After releasing the report here, he said that ignoring voice of the young people regarding participation in political process is the second problem faced by the youth. About 70 percent of youth complained in this aspect.
He said that release of the report is aimed to inform the government about problems faced by youth in the country, adding that the government should take steps to resolve these problems.
Sayed Akhtar, a researcher in DI, said that access to higher education and insecurity were the other challenges consequently.
He said that youths termed weak governance, lack of opportunities and corruption in administration main challenges behind unemployment and poverty across the country.
The report’s findings show that 98 percent of respondents believe that the law must be obeyed by youths, but 57 percent youth believed that living in Afghanistan without corruption and paying bribes is impossible.
The report said that over 60 percent of respondents supported the National Unity Government (NUG), but 47 percent of household youth are unsatisfied with performance of the president and the Chief Executive.
Youth urged the NUG to fulfill commitments in order to help the young generation.
The survey also demonstrated that trust over electoral bodies, political parties and judicial organs declined.
Welcomed the report released by the DI, President’s Advisor on Social Affairs, Adela Bahram Nezami, said that considering the challenges mentioned in the report, the government would try to explore ways to resolve these problems.
Representative of Advisory Board of Chief Executive Office, Parasto Yari, said the Chief executive Office would carve out plans according to the findings of the report in order to cope with the issues throughout the country.
According to a survey report published last month, investment in Afghanistan has dropped by 26 percent in 2015; thus, leaving many people jobless.
The Asia Foundation in its “2015 Survey of the Afghan People” revealed that pessimism over political, security and economy affairs is at high level. The annual Asia Foundation survey covered 9,586 Afghans (50.6 percent male and 49.4 female), representing 14 ethnic groups and all 34 provinces.
The public opinion poll reveals rising concern over political transition, insecurity, and struggling economy this year as compared to last decade surveys. More than half of all Afghans (57.5% respondents) say the country is going in the wrong direction.
The number of Afghans who say they are afraid for their personal safety is at the highest recorded level (67.4%) since the survey began. And despite government efforts to curb corruption, 89.9% of Afghans say corruption is a major problem in their daily lives, the highest percentage reported since 2004.
Youth cite unemployment and illiteracy as biggest challenges; the increasing availability of media and access to information seen as bright spot.
As foreign aid declines, Afghans say unemployment (71.4%) and illiteracy (26.5%) are the two biggest problems facing their youth. The 39.9 percent respondents said that if they give opportunity would leave Afghanistan. Confidence in the Independent Election Commission (IEC) dropped nearly in half over the past year, from 66.4 percent in 2014 to 36.4 percent in 2015.
