CREATING JOB OPPERTUNITIES FOR UNEMPLOYED

Name: H.A.D.N.C Seneviratne Index: S9562 Reg.No: 2008/S/10932 Subject: Macro Economics

Creating job opportunities for unemployed Unemployment is a major problem in many countries in the world. Especially its badly influenced to the developing countries like Sri Lanka. The lack of job opportunities can pose great problems to the peoples in these countries. Because they have no means of earning living, the unemployed could face problems in paying rental or mortgages. This may leads homelessness. Furthermore unemployment leads to problem like illnesses, malnutrition, mental stress and loss of self-confidence and eventually depression. Also it is a known fact that unemployment increases the crimes including robberies murders suicides and etc. Therefore finding a practical solution is a major task for a government in this kind of problem. Creating job opportunities is the major solution to the unemployment of a country. Mainly people work under government sector, private sector or selfemployed. Since government has privileges to influence on all three areas, government has a major responsibility about this unemployment problem. For that, government can implement various programmes, projects to create job opportunities. These are some of the suggested solutions which can be useful in finding job opportunities to unemployed in Sri Lanka.

Development of public work programmes Most oftenly public works like road development, cleaning roads, villages and cities, making public toilets and maintaining them are done by the municipal council or urban council labors. But I think this limited labor force doesnt fulfill the exact requirement of public works in the urban and rural areas. Especially in rural areas works like construction of roads need much labor force. So I think government should implement programmes to specifically public works and recruit people for these programmes. I think this will be much helpful to poor uneducated people who suffering from unemployment. Encouraging people who like self-employment and give them financial aids Policy makers increasingly view self-employment in the form of youth entrepreneurship as a possible solution to the youth unemployment crisis. Experts believe that 20% of the all people are fit to run their own business (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-employment). Therefore if
the government can target these people and encourage them to self employment it will create many opportunities to people who have their own abilities to start business or trades. Especially in this process people must have some kind of knowledge for self employment. There are many vocational training institutes found in Sri Lanka which trains people for this purpose. But the problem is peoples awareness about these institutes is in the lower side. Also there are people who have eager to start their own business but dont have financial strength. Government gives loans with the help of government banks (eg: self employment promotion initiative loan scheme (SEPI) by peoples bank) to these people. But their conditions in the loan contract in bit tougher side which causes not to entitle most of the 2

applicants to these loans. Therefore government must focus on these things specially implement well organized programmes, workshops about self employment. Expand the facilities of the vocational training institutes and give more publicity about these institutes to the society. Development of the loan scheme programmes and gives more opportunity to wide range of people who actually believe on self employment.

Modifying syllabuses of school and higher (university) educations by adding more industry oriented causes and training programmes. Unlike most of the foreign countries our education has high standards. Even though it has high standards our syllabuses are heavily based on theoretical aspects. There is a little concern about practical aspects in these syllabuses. Because of that most of the school children, undergraduates and graduates have less practical knowledge. So it raises youth unemployment. Especially in Sri Lanka private sector warmly welcomes very energetic youths who actually have more practical and general knowledge rather having traditional theoretical knowledge people. Therefore government must think of this situation and it is their responsibility to create skilled younger generation with have all round abilities in both theoretical and practical knowledge. For that government must to research and survey in both government and private sector to identify the job areas which can expand the job opportunities and create industry oriented courses targeting those specific fields, then add to school and higher education syllabuses. As an example University of Moratuwa introduces new degree programme called Transport and logistics management which has goal to create specialized undergraduates in logistics field. Because from a research they found that there is a big demand to this logistics field in Sri Lanka. This has to improve lot more in other universities rather than depending only on traditional courses. Find foreign job opportunities in other countries Government must talk with the other countries and find job opportunities to our people in those countries. Still most foreign job opportunities come from middle east but it must improve on other countries also.( E.g.: recently Sri Lanka had a contract with South Korea and as a results we have some job opportunities in South Korea). Give more opportunity to foreign investors to start their business/companies in Sri Lanka. This is one of the best ways to find job opportunities to unemployed in Sri Lanka. Because after the civil war, more foreign investors likes to invest their money to start their business/companies in our country than past. Not like our investors, generally these foreign investors have much more strength to give more job opportunities to people. Also most oftenly their salary levels are much higher than local company salaries. So government can invite more foreign investors to start their businesses, companies in our country. There may be practical issues like it may harmful to local companies which sometimes wont survive in the market. Therefore government can start a proper programme to this which they can invite foreign investors who actually doesnt badly influence on local market.( Eg: Most percentage of the IT related job opportunities are offered to Sri Lankans by global companies like Virtusa and IFS)
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 Find about other indirect/unpopular job opportunities for people and concentrate on them All the above suggestions are about direct job opportunities. But sometimes there can be job opportunities from indirect ways also. As an example consider the constructing of Hambanthota airport. It directly influenced on the development of the near areas. Because of that people from near areas got and will get lot more job opportunities which they never had in past. Also very few of them know there are so many online job opportunities available in the internet. You can work from home and earn money. In foreign countries, acceptable percentage of people earn from the online jobs. Now most of the urban areas covered by lot of internet broad bands. Internet is no more problem to these areas. So these opportunities can get to Sri Lankans. But the problem is their awareness and knowledge about these things. So if government can consider about these job opportunities and give it those to people who have ability to do these kinds of jobs that will be a great solution to unemployment. So these are some of the suggested solutions which can create job opportunities to unemployment. For these suggestions government want to play a big role by giving proper guidance, aids and on the other hand public awareness about is also very important to get better results.

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