PM talks with the Graduates

The prime minister advises graduates to look beyond the govt. for jobs
September 15: Speaking to 1,330 graduates yesterday the prime minister, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley, said jobs in the government were shrinking every year and urged them to look outside the government for employment.

“The government is already very big, it can’t expand and therefore, the job opportunities you must look for are not in the government but in the private sector,” he said, responding to employment concerns of the graduates attending the orientation programme in Thimphu. The government will require only a smaller number each year and that number is going to come down increasingly in future, said Lyonchhoen. “You should also remember that those graduates, who are not selected by the RCSC through the exam, are not rejects,” he said.

Lyonchhoen said the government was unhappy about the four percent unemployment rate, but it was committed to creating employment opportunities for the vast majority in various sectors.

Specifically speaking about employment opportunities, he asked the graduates to note down the jobs that would be created in the next three years (see box). Lyonchhoen said that the government would be creating at least 75,000 jobs by the end of the 10th Plan.

“We’re taking all kinds of measures to create employment opportunities and one of them is through the expansion of the private sector,” he said, while asking the graduates to read and understand the recent Bhutan’s draft economic development policy on the website.

Bhutan would be promoted as a service economy by expanding various services, such as tourism, to generate a lot of employment. “We want to develop and increase the value of our human resource, making everyone IT literate to compete globally and not just for employment opportunities within the country,” he said.

Lyonchhoen spoke for almost four hours and responded to several questions asked by the graduates.

Besides unemployment, graduates asked why Bhutan had not joined the world trade organisation (WTO) after years of consideration and why a lot of Bhutanese did not have citizenship identity cards.

Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley said: “There are so many issues to be resolved and so many questions to be answered before we join WTO. We’re continuing with our accession and we’ve not given up.”

He told the graduates that WTO was a very good place to be for many countries but an equally large number of countries and people think otherwise. “There are large sections of American people, who were behind WTO and regret being in the WTO today. They think auto industries have collapsed in America and many small towns and industries had to fold up because of WTO,” he said. “There are so many questions and we want to make sure that, when we join the WTO, we’ll stand to gain and not to lose in any way.”

On the issue of ID cards, Lyonchhoen said that the citizenship ID card is not confined to certain section of Bhutanese society but exists in small numbers in all dzongkhags. “Many people, who don’t have ID cards, are those, who are either drop-out cases, who did not register at the time of census taking, those who absconded and returned or those who did not have documentary evidence for ID cards,” he said. “The verification process isn’t that simple as it’s a matter of national security. But the government has instituted a high level committee, which is going through each and every individual case, and many have actually been cleared.”

One of the graduates also questioned the prime minister on the unfair allocation of budget for local government. Lyonchhoen, while responding to the question, explained that there were 204 local governments that differed in terms of level of development, population, special considerations and size. “There has to be a uniform way, a basis on which resources are allocated and the method we use isn’t ideal. We’re exploring other ways,” he said. He also said that the various departments and government organisations were also dissatisfied with the current criteria set for budget allocation.”

Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y Thinley told the graduates that, by the end of the 10th five-year plan, the government would create about 93,000 jobs.

“We are now looking at about 75,000 job seekers with almost two of the five years almost over,” he said.

Of the 75,000 jobs to be created in the next three years, about 25,000 to 28,000 additional jobs will be in the tourism sector, he said.

“We’re going to expand tourism in a huge way,” he said. “We’re having 27,000 tourists in a year and it has already generated a lot of employment. The number is going to triple in the next three years,” said Lyonchhoen.

About 10,000 to 12,000 ancillary jobs, arising from the tourism sector’s expansion, such as in transportation, would be created.

There would also be 9,000 to 10,000 ICT jobs created and about 10,000 to 12,000 jobs would be in the trade and other services. About 13,000 jobs in health, education and hydropower would also be created. “We’re also creating 6,000 to 8,000 jobs in the construction industry,” he said.

source: kuensel