Skills development to enhance employability is an area of vital importance to Indonesia. Many countries, including Indonesia, are finding it increasingly difficult to respond to the skills needs of their workforce in a time of increasing globalization, new technology and changing patterns of work. Like any other countries, Indonesia also has severe shortages of skilled labour due to the out-migration of skilled workers, an ageing workforce or simply the lack of capacity to provide training.
Training programmes available are often out of date and do not meet the needs of industry. Training that is available is not always equally available to all sectors of the community. There are many challenges on the skills issues to date. Many of these include national skills development system, linkages between employers and training organizations, skills mismatch, training and job creation for young people, and access to skills development and employment of people with disabilities, etc.
The ILO response
The ILO Indonesia support in vocational training has been done through various means, such as, policy level at the central level, direct field interventions to vocational training institutions and to other stakeholders and also emergency assistance. ILO Indonesia through its Education and Skills Training for Youth (EAST) and Job Opportunities for Youth (JOY) projects has worked closely with various ministries including the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration and Ministry (MoMT) on national education with the aim to improve employability and capacity for entrepreneurship among young women and men through improved access to educational and training opportunities.
Both of these programmes emphasizes on youth mainly through capacity building of school teachers and instructors of various public and private training institutions, on the following themes: life skills (including pre-vocational skills), job and education counselling, vocational training, and entrepreneurship. The JOY project also provide technical assistance to the Indonesian Professional Certification Authority to implement Competency Based Training as the national training system
ILO Indonesia together with MoMT and other partners has been providing emergency assistance in Aceh after the Tsunami through many and various programs that has now been completed and most recently, ILO is supporting 20 mobile training units in Padang to train earthquake affected people in the skills most in demand during the immediate aftermath.