Labor market needs specialists, technicians and technologists

Pursuant to a recent feature in Al Akbar on gaps in the labor market, the newspaper shed light today on a programme for ‘merging youth in the labor market’. The latter is implemented by the UNDP in partnership with the Ministry of Social Affairs and is based on analytical studies of the domestic labor market which were carried out to identify the labor needs of various companies and institutions in search for employees. According to the study, the country is in dire need of professionals in the following trades: cooking, carpentry, cooling and heating, car mechanic, electricity, and similar industries. The project, to be noted, is funded by the Regional Program for Development and Protection under the umbrella of the Lebanon Host Communities Support Project and covers three main geographical areas: Beqaa, Beirut southern suburbs and Tripoli. Research results have indicated that the most wanted jobs per geographical areas were as follow: Southern suburbs: cooking, carpentry, cooling and heating, and sewing;: Tripoli: cooking, carpentry, heating and cooling, industrial electricity, electricity of buildings, accounting and IT, and finally in the Beqaa, where there is a wide range of professional requirements because of the development of factories and industrial plants, the most common sought disciplines are: car mechanic and electric car technician, heating and cooling, industrial electricity, engine mechanic, building electrician, hospitality, marketing, sales and commerce, IT and audit, and food industry lab technicians. Also to be noted that the project is seeking to train some 170 young men and women in Tripoli and Zahleh and 70 in the southern suburbs on the above fields. In this respect, Al Akhbar interviewed the PR officer in the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture of Zahleh, Maria Rizkallah, who supervises the implementation of the project in her region. Rizkallah stated that the Chamber receives daily calls from establishments asking for technicians in many fields, but the main problem, she added, is the shortage in graduates in these disciplines. Most students do not opt for these areas particularly because vocational education is generally looked down on, as she put it. (Al Akhbar, September 2, 2016)

 

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