Govt. to motivate private sector to provide more jobs for youth

The government is ready to give more incentives and concessions to private sector if they provide more jobs for educated youth, a senior Finance Ministry official said.

The private sector prefers youth with ‘ fluency in English’ and IT skills with some experience for their job placements. The culture of the private sector is discarding the youth who do not come from urban, bi- lingual, socially and politically well connected backgrounds. This leads to a conflict of attitudes between the private sector employer aspirations and the educated youth which represents the largest proportion of the university education system in Sri Lanka, noted B. M. S. Batagoda, Director General, Department of National Planning, Ministry of Finance and Planning. He was participating in a panel discussion following the launch of the World Bank Report on ‘ More and Better Jobs in South Asia: Sri Lankan Perspective’ in Colombo last week.

He disclosed that the youth who proceeded to higher education enter the labour market very late and lack the necessary levels of experience required by the employers. Therefore the government is willing to implement any suggestions made by the private sector to tackle this unemployment problem. He noted that the President once made a suggestion to the Treasury to meet the salary expenses of educated youth if the private sector is willing to absorb them till they get necessary on- the- job experience. University courses have also been changed to meet the needs of the private sector, but still the highest levels of unemployment ( 82.8%) at all educational levels is been experienced by the youth falling into the age group of 15- 29 and the educated unemployment levels for the same age level stands at 70.2%( Degree and above). While free education provides youth with the paper qualifications and creates aspirations, in the experience of many, educational qualifications are not the most important considerations in obtaining employment, he said.

Private sector organizations give preference for youth with GCE ( A/ L) and with a reasonably good knowledge of English. When such persons enter the private sector at a young age, get experience and on the job training for about six to seven years, they are better equipped to run the activities of the private sector organizations, than the graduates without a sufficient knowledge of English, who come out of the universities at the age of around 27 years and with no work experience, he added. Under this set the government has to provide jobs for them, he said.