Bahrain still needs a complete paradigm shift particularly in education and training if it wants to speed up its manpower development.
Speaking at a Bahrain Society for Training and Development forum last night, the head of the Ministry of Labour's Directorate of Manpower Ahmed Al Banna said the paradigm shift is needed because "the core skills and competencies" required for productive work are missing.
"At present, in Bahrain, we have a 62 per cent expatriate workforce. Yet there are increasing numbers of young people of employable age - 15 to 29 - or roughly 50 per cent of employable national labour force," Al Banna said.
"We need a paradigm shift because even as structured now, the education systems will not be able to meet the requirements of employers in industry and commerce. School curricula bear little resemblance to the needs of industry and commerce, the education and training system is still quite outdated," said Al Banna.
Al Banna gave a presentation on "Achievements and Challenges: 1990-2004 - People Management Issues in the GCC."
Al Banna is also the past president of BSTD. The forum was held at the BIBF premises.
He said the GCC is faced with the challenge of unemployment made even more complex because of its rising population.
"The GCC has a population of 32 million with a growth of 1.8 per cent. The ILO (International Labour Organisation) expects it to rise to over 43 million by 2015," he said.
"To meet the challenges, the main achievement is that a high livel of investment in training and providing skills to the people have been made - these investments are done in education and training systems including 50 universities in the region, nine in Bahrain alone," he said. "But despite all these achievements, we will still see pressing challenges in the GCC for the next 10 years."
The challenges he said will be the steadily rising unemployment coupled with the scarcity of competent and highly skilled manpower.
He said Bahrain has shifted its approach in some ways over the past few years including its adoption of the the VET (vocational educational and training) programmes.
The VET programme in Bahrain, he said, is being considered to remedy the "present fragmented roles" of vocational education and training.
The required paradigm shift, he said, is from a focus on "one-off courses" to a focus on "lifelong learning."
"The required paradigm shift also should consider the movement from total government control to independent bodies and must function with the involvement of employers and all other stakeholders," he said.
© Bahrain Tribune 2005
