THE TIMES KUWAIT REPORT
To address the issue of unemployment among young Kuwaitis the government has been actively pursuing a Kuwaitization drive that aims to relieve expatriates working in the public sector and replace them with nationals, while encouraging the private sector to employ more citizens.
The Public Authority for Manpower, formed in 2013, has been mandated to implement the Kuwaitization program and its regulations, both in the public and private sectors. The authority has been tasked to ensure job opportunities are obtained by Kuwaiti nationals rather than expatriates in the public sector, and to verify that private sector employers were conforming to hiring and retaining nationals in specific categories and proportions as obliged by the labor law.
A report on Kuwaitization from the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in September 2020 noted that the policy had been implemented in 13 out of 16 government sectors that were targeted since 2017.
The report revealed that the percentage of nationals in the government sector had reached 79 percent, with the total number of citizens climbing to 297,335 compared to 77,421 expatriates. Interestingly, of the expatriates that continue to work in the public sector, the majority were engaged in the health, education and service sectors.
The three sectors, which together accounted for over 83 percent of remaining expatriates in the public sector, also highlights the shortcomings in the government’s Kuwaitization drive.
There are evidently very few takers among nationals for jobs in nursing, teaching, training and in services, as these posts often entail arduous work and technical skills, both of which are apparently in short-supply among young citizens. Employers in both the public and private sectors have also been long deploring the dearth of employable skills and commitment to undertake strenuous work among the national workforce.
In addition, the lack among young nationals of so-called ‘21st Century skills’ deemed necessary to engage effectively in the job market has been highlighted by several recent studies. Young nationals have often been identified as lacking the ability to think their way through abstract problems, critically evaluate information, work in teams, or comprehend and communicate in a language other than their own.
According to the intergovernmental Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), among the core subjects and themes for developing 21st Century framework are critical thinking, creativity and innovation, as well as communication and collaboration. It also calls for information and media literacy, as well as Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) skills. In addition, the OECD identified life and career skills, such as adaptability, initiative, productivity, responsibility and cross-cultural skills, as being critical for youth looking to become employable in a highly competitive globalized world.
The absence or low priority accorded to most of these 21st Century skills in the country’s academic and vocational training institutions does not augur well for youth seeking employment, even in the relatively ‘safe’ Kuwait labor market that generally cocoons nationals. The dearth of these skills is also not a prospect that policy-makers behind Kuwait’s ambitious New Kuwait Vision 2035 would like to see continue, as it could have a serious impact on the quality and productivity of the national workforce, and impact not only the Kuwaitization drive but also the growth and development of the country in the years ahead.
Following the recent meeting of the parliamentary Education, Culture and Guidance Affairs Committee with Minister of Education Dr. Ali Fahd Al-Mudaf, Chairman of the Committee MP Hamad Al-Matar in a pointed criticism of the education system in the country, said that although the budget allocated over KD2.4 billion for education, the quality of education rendered was abysmal, even compared to many countries that expend less than10 percent of this amount to their education budgets. The lawmaker also observed that despite education receiving a little over 10 percent of the KD23.05 billion annual budget for 2021/22, over 83 percent of this amount was being spent on staff salaries, with very little left over to promote academic standards.
In fairness, it needs to be said that the government has repeatedly demonstrated its intention to revitalise the education sector through a series of policy reforms and investments over the years. For instance, from 2010 to 2014, the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the National Center for Education Development (NCED) had in cooperation with the World Bank embarked on a multi-year integrated education modernization program labeled ‘Education Technical Cooperation Program’. The program aimed to address critical issues in the country’s education system by introducing curriculum reform, developing national assessment systems, enhancing school leadership, and creating professional standards.
At the end of the program in 2014, the World Bank in its assessment of the program admitted that there were several shortcomings in the five-year exercise. The Bank noted that in order for the education reform process to realize its real impact there was an urgent need for sustained high-level political commitment and support for the reforms. Hinting at political instability and change in governments during the period of the reform exercise, the Bank said that several key decisions were stalled at critical moments in the program’s trajectory, thereby limiting its potential for positive impact.
The Bank also pointed to the lack of adequately skilled and qualified human resources necessary for effective implementation of the reforms, with staff turnover due to retirement or other reasons leading to “lost” capacity and the need to retrain replacements on several occasions. Also, more importantly, the Bank’s assessment underlined the absence of a clear and widely communicated mandate from MoE, including in the development of a national assessment system.
Though the system was developed locally at the NCED, and successfully implemented for three consecutive years in several school grades, the results from the assessment remained under-utilized, thereby limiting its potential to further the reform process. The question that comes to mind when one reads the World Bank assessment is, if we are not keen to analyse, learn and adapt the positive, while weeding out the negative aspects, from such reform exercises, why conduct them in the first place?
But this question has apparently not deterred the MoE and the NCED from engaging with the World Bank in 2015, to launch a second five-year technical cooperation agreement focused on education reforms. The new program primarily targeted implementing reforms geared towards improving teaching and learning as well as monitoring the progress and impact of implementation on schools and students. It also aimed to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Education and the NCED in policy, decision-making and implementation of integrated reforms. The World Bank assessment on this second reform initiative is still awaited.
In the meantime, an earlier study conducted by the World Bank had revealed that although Kuwait had over 93 percent gross enrolment (GER) in primary and secondary levels of education, the GER at the tertiary level was only around 27 percent. This was only half the 54.7 percent average among the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) bloc as a whole, and it was also lower than the global average of 37.5 percent. With nearly 37 percent of the population under the age of 14, and 35 percent between the ages of 15 and 34, making the provision of high-quality education and training facilities an essential part of national strategies is crucial for economic development and diversification.
With the aim of focusing more on higher education and vocational training, the government in its last realignment of ministerial portfolios decided to split the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, and create a separate entity, the Ministry of Higher Education. Based on this dichotomy, Dr. Mohammad Abdullatif Al-Fares was assigned as the new Minister of Higher Education, and mandated to revamp higher education and vocational training in the country and to supervise plans and programs that encourage the preparation and development of human resources, so as to serve and advance society.
Despite the renewed focus on higher education and vocational training, the fact remains that most Kuwaitis prefer joining the university rather than take up a vocational training course. Available data on unemployment in the country reveals that over 40 percent of university graduates remain unemployed. But this has not deterred students passing out of secondary education heading straight to enroll in universities.
Only a small fraction of secondary level students opt to join the several colleges and industrial training centers run by the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET), the entity established in 1982 to oversee vocational training. And, of those who do enroll with PAAET, the majority do so for courses in secretarial and office work with an eye on applying for a post in the lucrative government sector. However, on graduating from PAAET, they too join the ranks of unemployed young nationals awaiting a job opening in an already bloated public sector entity.
Currently the public sector salaries, subsidies and grants account for the largest portion (71%) of the government’s annual budget expenditure. There is growing realization among policy makers and others that this huge wage bill is unsustainable and untenable, especially given the recurring annual budget deficits and relatively low oil prices. For its part, the government has for the past many years been attempting in vain to get young graduates to enter the private sector with financial enticements. The authorities have also been goading private businesses to hire more nationals through a quota system for citizens among total employees, while making it more cumbersome to hire expatriates through visa restrictions.
Despite this carrot and stick approach by policy makers, both citizens and the private sector remain wary of each other. Nationals believe the salaries, perks and job security in private businesses are nowhere close to that offered in the public sector. At the same time, notwithstanding the difficulties in hiring them, many private businesses prefer to employ expatriates for the productivity and value they bring to the business. Additionally, many private sector enterprises say that most of the national workforce do not have the skills deemed necessary for employment.
While the government can do more at the school, university and vocational training level to ensure that students emerge with the skills to engage effectively in the country’s workforce, there is not much it can do to ensure graduates already in the job market have this ability. It is clear that the private sector will have to do more to upskill youth through in-house training programs and other training courses, if Kuwait is to reap any benefit from the small window of opportunity provided by the country’s large working age population.
In this regard, it is gratifying to note that the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and the United Nations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) last week to promote sustainable development among the private sector in Kuwait, under the country’s ‘Vision 2035’ strategic plan. The MoU also focuses on supporting partnerships for developing and strengthening ‘skills for the 21st century’ among Kuwaiti’s children and youth, from the earliest age to assure relevance and competitiveness in the emerging job market.
Speaking on the occasion, Muhammad Jassim Al-Sagar chairman of the board of directors of KCCI noted that the MoU focuses among others in “giving a leading role to the youth and encouraging them to take the initiative to innovate and provide advanced and new solutions, and developing skills and expertise to ensure consistency with the requirements of the labor market and enhance competitiveness”.
It is evident that going into the future university graduates and vocational degree holders will have to gain the needed 21st Century skills needed to adapt to a changing more globalized world. They will also have to stop waiting for openings in public sector jobs and begin to engage with the private sector, either through retraining in different subjects or obtaining other vocational skills needed in the market in order to ensure their own and the country’s future. World Youth Skills Day on 15 July would be an ideal date to make a new beginning to this effort.
Read Today's News TODAY... on our Telegram Channel click here to join and receive all the latest updates t.me/thetimeskuwait
