 |
Kathmandu Tuesday January 29, 2002 Magh 16, 2058.
|
Skilled manpower growth rate
dismal in Nepal
Post Report
KATHMANDU, Jan 28:Despite the efforts put in by
the government and the presence of a large number of training agencies, the rate of growth
of skilled labour force in Nepal continues to be dismal.
Officials lament that the effort, time and money
put in by the government is yet to bring the desired results. And going by the annual
spending that government makes to carry out the different types of training programmes,
certainly the results are not encouraging.
The government each year spends over Rs 1
billion pumping in money to over 200 scattered training centres run by different
ministries and departments. Adding to that is the privately run training agencies
affiliated to Council of Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT).
And it is the lack of needs assessment and
labour market information that has blighted the success of the training programmes. More
so, because training are not demand based and its quality very poor.
"The trained manpower coming out of these
training agencies cannot sell themselves in the labour market and very few opt for
self-employment," says Binod Kumar Bhattarai, Member Secretary at the Employment
Promotion Council (EPC).
The unemployment figure of the trained labour
force stands well over thirty thousand according to a study carried out by EPC in urban
parts of the country. The problem, according to experts, starts with the weak education
system itself that lacks employment orientation. This impedes the growth of skilled
manpower and bars them from job opportunities.
"The curriculum of the training agencies
are obsolete and too diverse. There is no stardardisation of the curriculum and the lack
of labor market information has resulted in ad hoc implementation of the training
programmes. This has created skill mismatch, which must be curbed to address the
burgeoning unemployment," Bhattarai adds.
The unemployment figure of the country currently
stands at over 1.6 million which is over 16 percent of the economic active population of
the country. The number of skilled manpower among the employed population is very low.
Same is the case with the annually generated labour force which stands over 300 thousand,
according to the figures of the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
Meanwhile, studies carried out by the government
have recognised a number of loopholes present in the national training system attributing
these as reasons behind the poor output of the training system.
The report of the Employment Promotion Committee
(dissolved) and National Planning Commission (NPC) submitted to the government in 1999 had
highlighted that the national training system has poor infrastructure, obsolete
curriculum, lacks supervisory support, coordination and monitoring mechanism.
It even underscored that publicly funded
training programmes do not respond to the labour market while formal and informal sectors
sustain by foreign manpower and the foreign exchange earning segment are losing
competitiveness in the international markets partly due to lack of opportunities for skill
development.
Stressing that the country needs to attain
highest level of efficiency to ensure overcoming of paucity of resources, the report had
urged for the formulation of National Training Policy (NTP) to streamline the training
system of the country. The committee had also developed a framework of the (NTP) and
submitted it to the government to formulate the module and policy to govern the training
system.
However, nothing concrete has materialised on
the issue so far. "The priority of the government has shifted in the recent times and
nothing has been realised so far," says Dr Nirmal Prasad Pandey, Member of the NPC.
However, highly placed government official voice
out for the formulation of the policy and body to govern the training system of the
country. It has been highlighted in the recent report of the Employment-Oriented Skill
Development Training Central Coordination and Directive Committee comprised of secretaries
and officials from eight ministries and the CTEVT.
The report of the committee chaired by the Prime
Minister Sher Bahadr Deuba himself has recommended for upgrading the infrastructure and
capacity of the training agencies, stardardisation of the curriculum and formulation of
central body to coordinate and monitor the training agencies, among others.
The report of the committee will be submitted to
the premier Deuba in near future, according to the officials at the EPC. |
