Sri Lanka lacks skilled workers, need for improvements

While the lack of skilled personnel is well known, the Employers' Federation of Ceylon ( EFC) is now assessing the skills of Sri Lankans and moving to recognise the existing skills of employees.

Kanishka Weerasinghe, Director General/CEO, EFC mentioned the above while answering queries by the media at a panel discussion on the Education Budget Proposals 2019 for Human Capital Development held last week at the National Human Resources Development Council of Sri Lanka (NHRDC).

Dinesh Weerakkody, Chairman, NHRDC said that the country is faced with two issues, one is that the employers complain of not having sufficient people in such sectors like tourism, construction, technology, etc. which is the supply side problem and on the demand side employers complain that those coming out of the universities and schools do not have required skills.

What they are attempting to do essentially, he said is to improve the quality of vocational education and make it more market oriented. He pointed out that 50 or 60 per cent of graduates coming out of the universities are from the social sciences like arts, commerce instead they should have people who do mathematics and technology and things like that. Make the courses relevant so that the students can be employed immediately, he said.

Some of the proposals discussed at the panel discussion were: Introduction of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education for women to increase their participation in the labour force and to improve that experience for political and community leadership. Allocate Rs. 300 million to strengthen technology education to develop a work-ready workforce.

Make a future-ready workforce through redefining the outcome based learning. Provide greater access to students in tertiary, vocational and professional education. Utilize Rs. 200 million for university education – staff development, productivity and internationalising.

He said they should create education and training institutions – single window service centre for privation institutions and partnerships with government and foreign institutions on education and training; promote innovations and entrepreneurship development; have market orientation of curricular and branding of institutions and productivity and livelihoods enhancement of youth engaged in three-wheel driving.

Mr. Weerasinghe, continuing the response to the media, said that their companies employ 10 per cent of the workforce and endorsed the holistic approach by the NHRDC to the skills development from the school, tertiary, and vocational and university education systems to acquire skills in relation to where the demand lies in the labour market.

He said that while there are no takers for more than 10,000 opportunities for internship and training in their companies, the sad part is that the state sector students are unaware of the opportunities. He drew attention to the fact that students of the universities, tertiary and vocational training have to look at the world of work.

Chandra Embuldeniya, academic and business leader famed for running a university and a Board Member, NHRDC focused on job orientation also responded to the media queries. He said that those who intend starting institutions face enormous setbacks of going ‘pillar to post’ and suggested that there should be a single- window unit to efficiently break barriers like having to register the new institution with the Tertiary Vocational Education Commission and then having to request approvals from the Ministry of Higher Education apart from going to the Registrar of Companies and the Board of Investment.

He said that the present university intake is 30,000 and pointed out that this number should be doubled. Some Sri Lankan students go overseas to follow professional studies at an enormous cost or otherwise the government has to establish universities at a cost of around Rs. 14 to 15 billion.

Avoiding all this hassle, he suggested that a voucher system could be introduced where the student would be issued with a voucher to cover the cost of the course that could be paid back in three years.

The panellists included: Dinesh Weerakkody, Chairman, NHRDC; Kanishka Weerasinghe, DG/CEO, EFC; Chandra Embuldeniya, Board Member, NHRDC; Jagath Perera, President, The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and Dr. K. A. Lalithadheera, Director, NHRDC.

The query by the media whether there should be private medical colleges in the country and whether they are budgeted in the proposals was ‘anathema’ to some of the panelists who declined to respond to the queries.