Let's Get to Work!

Let's get to work!

By TARIQ KHONJI
Published: 5 December 2005

A COMPANY that helped address unemployment in Australia has been appointed to support a BD30 million national employment scheme in Bahrain.

An agreement was signed between the Labour Ministry and Australian consultancy firm EFI International yesterday.

The firm will help the ministry assess the talents and abilities of employees and help to match them with employers.

It will be involved in virtually all aspects of the scheme, including training programmes for jobseekers and the associated media campaign.

The BD4 million agreement will see the firm providing technical support for the project for up to 18 months.

The agreement was signed between Labour Minister Dr Majeed Al Alawi and EFI International international director Dr Francine Pinnuck. Dr Al Alawi said the company was selected because it played an important role in addressing Australia's previously chronic unemployment problems.

He said that while there are jobs available in Bahrain, the ministry had faced problems matching employees with employers.

"The unemployed don't want to work for the private sector because they believe it won't treat them properly and employers don't want to hire Bahrainis because they say they lack work ethic and ability," he said.

"Each side is suspicious of the other. When we manage to change this we'll be able to reduce Bahrain's unemployment."

Dr Pinnuck said that both jobseekers and employers would be guided through the campaign. "Workers should be made to believe that there are opportunities in the private sector and career paths to follow," she said.

Dr Al Alawi said that training would mostly be conducted at the Bahrain Training Institute (BTI), but will be outsourced when necessary.

He said that government jobs would also be offered when available, but that jobseekers won't always get to choose.

"The reason we are grouping civil service jobs with the private sector is because we don't want people running to the civil service trying to be employed there," he said.

"They will have to come to us to be employed and if they don't we won't consider them to be unemployed."

Dr Al Alawi said they would have to accept jobs available to them, although there would be an effort made to put them in positions they are qualified or have a talent for.

The ambitious campaign hopes to employ more than 10,000 people by the end of next year. "A study we conducted in association with the Bahrain Centre for Studies and Research showed that over 70 per cent of the unemployed have not studied beyond high school and most of them are dropouts," he said.

"These will be trained as craftsmen.

"Those with two-year degrees or qualifications beyond high school will be trained as technicians and those with degrees will be trained as specialists."

Companies will be able to select the employees that will be trained to meet their requirements, but will have to pay a minimum of BD200, BD250 or BD300, respectively.

Labour Minister Under-Secretary Shaikh Abdulrahman bin Abdulla Al Khalifa said yesterday's announcement had nothing to do with recent protests by members of the so-called Unemployment Committee. "This has been in the works since June," he said.