Dar es Salaam (ILO News) - The Prime Minister’s office – Policy, Parliamentary Affairs, Labour, Employment, Youth and People living with disability in collaboration with the ILO and other stakeholders organized a three days workshop, from 8 to 10 June 2016, to validate the situation analysis report for the review of the National Employment Policy (NEP) 2008 in Tanzania.
The workshop which brought together government officials, employment stakeholders from workers and employers’ organizations, and CSOs aimed mainly at reviewing the current NEP to more effectively address structural constraints to promote employment creation and decent work attributes.
The review exercise will also set up a platform in which gainful and decent employment opportunities for Tanzania's growing labour force can be created within the framework of equity, fairness, security and dignity.
Officiating at the workshop, the Assistant Director of employment from the Ministry, Mr. Ahmed Makbel, emphasized on the importance of the exercise and said that,
“We need a new NEP that should facilitate improving business practices and investment incentives, stimulating entrepreneurship, promoting public-private partnerships and encouraging corporate social responsibility.”
He noted that the reviewing of NEP will help in creating an enabling environment for increased production and decent employment opportunities to achieve inclusive and equitable growth.
Mr. Makbel mentioned some of the national initiatives which were executed during the implementation of NEP 2008. They include, facilitating inclusion of employment and decent work in government budget guidelines and annual plans and massive investment in education and training to enhance employability of the national labour force, among others.
He further explained that, during this period some key labour market indicators improved especially on the level of unemployment and poverty.
Unemployment declined slightly from 11.7 to 10.3 per cent in 2014 and youth unemployment from 13.4 per cent in 2006 to 11.7 in 2014. However there are still key labour market challenges including - policy issues and employment creation not being translated into action at local levels and in generating significant impacts on unemployment, underemployment, and poverty rates especially among the youth and women remaining pervasive.
The Director for ILO Country Office, Dar es Salaam, Ms. Mary Kawar noted that the process has come in the right time considering that, the new government is keen on tackling the structural challenges in employment thereby achieve the transition of Tanzania to a middle income country by 2015 and, in addition, there is the new five year development plan which aims to achieve structural economic transformation with equal focus on human development.
She further urged that “…validation of the situation analysis will inform the future course of job quality and quantity…However political commitment and linking the policy to national budgets right from the inception stage is very significant to success.”
Background Information
According to the country’s Integrated Labour Force Survey 2014, the working age population is currently at 25.8m compared to 21m in 2006. Of these, 22 million people (86.7%) are economically active compared to 18.8 million in 2006.
Tanzania’s economic situation in the past decade has shown that while economic growth is a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient condition for employment creation and ultimately poverty reduction. It is against this background that there is an urgent need for formulating an employment policy that can provide a road map for addressing unemployment and related challenges in a more specific and robust manner.
