Afzali explains reasons for unemployment

KABUL‘s priorities, on Tuesday said unemployment increased due to a lack of cooperation between public and private sectors.

Testifying before the upper house, Meshrano Jirga, Afzali said 600,000 qualified candidates were jobless, 6.2 million covered on jobs and 1.2 million had no permanent jobs.

She said a majority of Afghans had no jobs because the government lacked financial resources and the international community did not invest in job-creating projects as expected and failed to consider the country’s priorities.

In support of her claim regarding the high level unemployment rate, the minister said the reason has been the lack of required cooperation between public and private sectors.

She said her ministry had embarked on efforts to create cooperation between the two sectors, besides imparting training to people in various skills through vocational programmes in order to reduce the number of jobless individuals.

She said there were a total of 32 vocational centres across the country and that 20,000 people would complete their graduation from these centres over next three years.

Afzali said 86 percent of those graduated from vocational institutes had been provided with jobs. However, she did not say how many have so far graduated from the centres.

Welfare commission chairman Mohammad Bashir Samim said young Afghans travelled to foreign countries in search of jobs in the absence of work opportunities at home, while foreigners were being hired in Afghanistan against high salaries.

“Our jobless youth are being killed while trying to cross borders into other countries. While in Afghanistan, foreigners are offered $30000 to $40000 in salaries,” the lawmaker said, adding most of foreigners in the country lacked work permit. “How can we know if these foreigners are not spying for their countries,” Samim said.

Afzali replied her ministry was making all-out efforts to ensure all foreigners were issued work permits and those working in the country without permits had been a result of unprotected borders.

She said her ministry had created a joint mobile committee with the intelligence service to search for foreign individuals working in Afghanistan without legal permission.

She said such individuals were either issued work permits or sent back to their home countries.  Nearly 21000 foreigners were issued work permits last year, increasing Afghanistan’s income, she said.

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