The mismatch between jobs and job seekers continues to be an issue in the country. This mismatch over the years has only accelerated the unemployment rate of youth in the country. To address this, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development is working towards making Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) an attractive learning career path for youth as well as the workforce. A conference was held today to discuss the way forward to building the country’s future-ready workforce.
The conference highlighted that the TVET sector is not very popular among youths and only the students who could not land anywhere opted for the TVET courses.
However, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development’s initiative to make TVET an attractive career path is expected to solve this.
‘‘Currently, we are embarking on the reform called the Technical and Vocational Education Training reform program and it basically inspires us to see TVET as an attractive learning career path for the youth as well as the workforce. The department is now committed to seeing how we can regrant TVET as an attractive learning career path,’’ said Norbu Wangchuk, the director of the Department of Workforce Planning and Skills Development.
Participants from the Ministry of Education and Skills Development and the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Employment and representatives from colleges gathered during the conference to discuss the emerging situation of the job market in the country.
‘‘Currently, the labour market is largely characterised by the demand of the economy and the skills and knowledge that the education system has been supplying so far, and therefore, there seems to be a continuous mismatch between the skills supplied and the skills demanded by the economy as well as the investments. This has not helped Bhutan in terms of promoting employment opportunities mostly for youths,” added Norbu Wangchuk.
‘‘Another trend that we can see here in Bhutan is that we can see that those with higher education levels also make up the majority of the unemployed here. So this is a concerning trend that needs to be addressed,’’ said Kunzang Lhamu, the director of the Department of Employment & Entrepreneurship.
‘‘By the time our graduates come out and enter the employment market, the market changes. For example, BCCI gave us requisitions on culinary arts hospitality, and even some engineering programs. These graduates ended up doing the RCSC exam and ended up becoming planning officers or human resource officers in the government, nothing related to what they studied in the last three or four years. And now the change is much faster,’’ said Tshewang Tandin, the president of Royal Thimphu College.
According to the National Statistics Bureau, the current unemployment rate in the country stands at 5.9 per cent with the youth unemployment rate at 28.6 per cent.
According to the Bhutan Labor Market Information System, there are around 26 thousand active job seekers in the country as of September.
Sonam Yuden
Edited by Sonam Pem
