Director of Manpower of Papua Province Hans Himber stated in Jayapura on Thursday that the local Industrial Job Training Center (BLKI) is convinced that the program would yield concrete results in the efforts to handle unemployment.
"We hope that the apprenticeship program will help us to tackle unemployment problems, as it provides a wide range of training courses to the public," he affirmed.
Himber said that Papua's lack of industrial activities and the tendency of some of its people to work as civil servants played a role in determining the unemployment rate on the island.
He called for a shift in this paradigm, so that people are not always hoping to become civil servants.
"Instead, we should think of how to create job vacancies. However, we can see today that some Papuans have started to run their own retail businesses, so they no longer dream of becoming civil servants," he pointed out.
Himber stated that the program will provide 13 trainings in various fields, including welding, automotive, hospitality, furniture, computer, culinary, sewing, and cosmetology.
"The program aims to enable the participants to work in business sectors or run their own businesses according to the skills they gain at the BLKI," he remarked.
Himber believes that such a shift in paradigm will, in turn, help lower the unemployment rate in Papua.
Meanwhile, Head of the Papua Statistics Agency Adriana Helena Carolina stated that the number of members of the province's workforce in February 2023 was recorded at 2.51 million people, a decline of 76.22 thousand as compared to the previous year.
"The rate of workforce participation is recorded at 76.79 percent, a 3.44-percent decline as compared to February 2022," she remarked.
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Translator: Qadriwi Pratiwi, Tegar Nurfitra
Editor: Anton Santoso
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