January 16, 2021
FOR ECONOMIC recovery post-COVID-19, governments and businesses are now increasing their investments in digital skills development to ensure that youth can leverage online education and employment opportunities.
With a plan to resume its work on judging occupational skills of workers in January in line with health standards, the National Skills Standards Authority of Myanmar has taken steps to judge skill standards of 3,000 employees in the 2020-2021 fiscal year.
As the Union Government continues to respond to the ongoing pandemic, it is important to ensure that our youth have the skills they need to benefit from new employment opportunities.
To create job opportunities post COVID-19, we need to do a research about employment demand from foreign and local investment sectors, from green economy and digital economy. At the same time, we need to a strategic move by conducting trainings for workers to ensure that they can adapt to new job opportunities. This should be the first step towards recovery in what has been a punishing year for manufacturing.
To succeed on a large scale, the government and private sector partners are to work together to empower youth with the skills they need to thrive during and after the COVID-19 pandemic through digital skills training programmes.
As NSSA is working towards producing quality human resource, the programmes should focus on helping lay off workers to benefit new employment opportunities in the digital economy and in the post-COVID-19 world.
According to a survey, most of the internal migrant workers in the industrial zones in Yangon Region are from Ayeyawady Region, Bago Region and Magway Region , and of them, women make up 50 per cent of the population of migrant workers. Most of the migrant workers completed primary and middle education and found jobs at garment factories.
Hence, our future policies should consider the need of such workers nationwide to help them get new professional skills and to crate job opportunities in their regions.
We are confident that the regional governments and private sector partners can work together to overcome challengers from the COVID-19 and to help the workers be ready to seize job opportunities to be emerged along with the economic recovery plan.
GNLM
