Gov’t to train jobless community college graduates on demanded skills

AMMAN — The government on Tuesday announced a plan to qualify 70,000 graduates of community colleges to enter the labour market. 

The project was announced following a Cabinet session as part of the National Strategy for Employment.

The Labour Ministry launched the National Employment Campaign to implement the strategy in January last year with the goal of creating thousands of jobs for Jordanians in cooperation with the private sector.

The plan seeks to provide training for these graduates on various skills demanded by the labour market, while they will receive allowances during training.

The Council of Ministers tasked the National Centre for Human Resources Development with overseeing and administrating the project.

The Employment, Technical and Vocational Education Training Fund will finance the project, the Cabinet decided.

The move is part of its efforts to reduce unemployment, which went down by 0.06 per cent to 11.4 per cent during the third quarter of 2014, compared with 12 per cent in the second quarter of this year, according to Department of Statistics (DoS) data.

DoS attributed the decrease to the employment policies in the public and private sectors that contributed to recruiting more Jordanians in the labour market. 

During Tuesday’s session, the government also endorsed several by-laws and agreements.