By Yunus S Saliu
Scores of job seekers on Wednesday converged at the GIZ Conference Hall, West Field in Kanifing Municipal Council for a 3-day organized workshop focused on inclusive employment for job seekers, graduates, and return migrants.
The commenced three-day workshop taking place at the German Agency for International Cooperation and Development (GIZ) office was organised by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment (MOTIE) in partnership with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) The Gambia and the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation.
The inclusive employment training workshop was meant to train and sensitize young people about some opportunities that are available in the country and sub-region to allow them a detailsinformation to know some of the opportunities that are available in the country.
Sibgha Ajaz, Programme Coordinator of Migration Management Unit at IOM welcomed the participants to the workshop and disclosed that the outlined topics for the training are extremely exciting which is not every day that participants will get the opportunity to be in such training.
She said her organization believed that orderly and regular migration is really a human right as long as it is managed in a proper way while noting the presence of government officials at the training saying their presence was to support the youth in achieving their full potential.
Therefore, she encouraged them to take, and make full use of the workshop opportunity meant to provide them with an understanding of how they will get into the labour market
Faba Jammeh, Director of Employment at the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment (MOTIE) disclosed that the training is one of the preparations they need “because after graduation your journey to labour market starts.”
He noted that the government through the MOTIE has produced an employment policy to guide everyone while noting that the policy has two promises that will guide job seekers either as self-employed or employees under someone
Under these two promises or options, “The first point is when you initiate something for yourself and then see whether you can sustain that. Otherwise, you look at other options – to get employed.”
The Director of Employment expressed their target, and the target includes how many people will be taken out of unemployment to employment status because the government is creating 150,000 jobs “from 2022 to 2026. Already we are in 2024 though the biggest challenge on this target is that we’ve not been able to establish how many jobs have been created so far.”
“But we are happy to announce that GBOS has just conducted what we call the Labour Force Survey, but this is not enough to tell the story of employment creation. But we hope with the support of partners like IOM to ensure that we establish a system that will be able to track on a real-time basis each time you are given an appointment, this will tick in the system to say Mr. X or Madam X has taken up a job. And when you are out or leave the job it will also tick on the system to say X or Y has also left the job,” he explained.
Nyallow Barrow, Commissioner of Labour at the Department of Labour commended the organizers for what he described as a great initiative that will help the job seekers in the labourmarket.
He emphasised that the inclusive employment training workshop was purposely designed for the job seekers, returnees, and graduates while advising them to be attentive and ask necessary questions as much as they can thus “they already highlighted employment issues, rights of workers, rights of employers, and not only the rights of workers but also the responsibility because they go together.”
Meanwhile, he thanked the IOM and partners for funding the program noting that it is not the first collaboration while he urged the trainees to take good stock of whatever they learn at the training.