KRG’s Minister of Labour Announces Formation of Committee to Address Unemployment

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) - The Kurdistan Region (KRG)’s Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Kwestan Mohamad held a labor market assessment workshop in Erbil with the participation of UNDP and USAID.

In her opening speech, Kwestan Mohamad, KRG’s Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, announced that a high-level committee has been formed between the ministries to identify the needs of the labor market and reduce unemployment.

She highlighted that, “the three ministries of Education, Higher Education and Labor should coordinate together so that the curriculum is responsive to the labor market.”

Regarding the agenda of the workshop, Mariwan Bagok, Director General of Labor and Social Security, stated that, “the workshop is to determine the needs of the labor market; the high committee of ministries after several meetings and several reports were presented by ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Planning, and other members of the committee.”

“We have come to the conclusion that information on the labor market should be collected and the types of labor should be determined professionally, based on labor market surveys,” he explained.

According to the Director General of Labor and Social Security, another major discussion point was to collect information on the demand of companies for labor, “because the needs of the private sector in the labor market are not known, so it is important for the private sector to provide information.”

He also emphasized that another part of the workshop was related to building bridges between vocational centers in the Ministries of Labor, Higher Education and Education, while building relationships with trade unions and contractors in a way to fill the labor market vocational centers.

Another objective of the workshop was to adopt a new mechanism for receiving new information from the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The workshop focused its efforts on relying on the local workforce and finding more job opportunities for workers in order to implement the Prime Minister Masrour Barzani and Council of Ministers Decision No. 172.