PRESS

Source:Lanka Business Online, Sri Lanka - 17 hours ago

Sri Lanka's Yen

16 August 2005 14:43 hours

Sri Lanka developing national action plan to cut youth unemployment by seven percent in five years.

Youth unemployment is a longstanding headache in Sri Lanka and is already directly linked to two youth uprisings that killed over 10,000 young people.
But youth, or young people between the ages of 15 to 24, still show the highest rates of unemployment in Sri Lanka.

Government data says 22 percent of the young people between the ages of 15 to 24, are currently unemployed.

Now, the local Youth Employment Network (YEN) says it is working on a national action plan to cut this figure to 15 percent by 2011.

The final target is to reduce youth unemployment to 9 percent by 2016.

"We have started discussions with government Ministries, chambers of commerce, trade unions and youth representatives to develop a national action plan to meet this target," said Deepthi Lamahewa, CEO, YEN Sri Lanka.

With another set of elections looming, the local YEN office is also trying to ensure that the action plan to help young people find employment, survives the island's volatile politics.

"We are holding consultations with all the political parties to ensure that this is a non-political, national agenda," says Lamahewa.

"So yes, definitely the programme will continue even if there is a change of government," he says.

YEN is a partnership between the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), to tackle rising youth unemployment all over the world.

According to the UN, 85 percent of the world's 1.15 billion youth population live in developing countries like Sri Lanka.

But youth unemployment has increased all over the world and over the next 10 years South Asian countries will have the second highest number of young people looking for jobs.

The International Labour Organisation says the number of young people looking for work will increase by 15 percent in South Asian countries, next to a 28 percent increase in sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Sri Lanka's Millennium Development Goals country report published this year, the island's youth population is 3.1 million, out of the total population of 19 million.

Teenagers and young adults account for as much as 60 percent of total unemployment but over half - 54 percent - of the young people without work, have passed their ordinary level exam or hold higher qualifications.