Renewed call to universities to plan according to labor market demands

The minister of industry, Dr. Hussein Haj Hassan, reiterated once more the need to exert more towards the creation of jobs for university graduates, particularly fresh engineers. Hassan was speaking last Saturday during his sponsorship of a graduation ceremony organized by the three branches of the state-run Lebanese University School of Engineering. The minister called on every official or sect or political party in the country to get at work, especially that the government lags behind in planning, and noting that the public debt has reached USD 72 billion. However, he kept optimistic that the projected oil and gas resources would open up many employment prospects for all disciplines, notably in the petrochemicals, electric, mechanical and civil engineering, in addition to other professional sectors including tourism and food sectors. Haj Hassan pressed the need for urgency in handling the situation in order to generate the desired outputs. “We need nearly 40 thousand jobs every year while we currently create 15 thousand only, which means that each year we have some 25 thousand new jobless people,” the minister maintained, pointing out that this is a major political scuffle. Haj Hassan finally warned that Lebanon cannot afford to see more nationals emigrating or staying jobless in their country. “What we need is citizens who have rights and responsibilities,” he added while concluding by calling for the development of a national labor market plan that will take into account the present imbalance in supply and demand, pledging to cooperate with deans of universities to this effect. (Al Diyar, July 17, 2016)