DUSHANBE, December 22, Asia-Plus — The situation on Tajikistan’s labor market remains complex, Subhoniddin Ashurov, Deputy Minister for Social Security and Labor, remarked at international conference formally titled “Development of Professional Skills and Support for Small Enterprise as Key Factors for Reduction of Poverty in Tajikistan” in Dushanbe on December 21.
This two-day conference that ended yesterday brought together representatives from the government bodies dealing with employment issues, international organizations and experts from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The main objective of the conference was to analyze a state of the labor market in the republic, assess its requirements, as well as to discuss the ways of regulating supply and demand on the labor market.
According to Ashurov, a number of professionally qualified specialists does not meet requirements of the labor market. “For example, compared to 1991 a number of graduates in Tajikistan increased by 51.5 percent in 2005, including nearly 37-fold increase in number of certificated economists and thirteen-fold increase in number of lawyers, while a number of professionally qualified specialists in agriculture over the same period has decreased by 25 percent,” Tajik official noted.
He also noted that over the past fifteen years, the country’s population has increased by 26 percent and labor resources by 54 percent. In the meantime, the rate of employment over the same period has increased by only seven percent. “It means that the employment growth is left behind by the labor resources increase by 47 percent,” Ashurov stressed.
The conference resulted in adoption of a resolution providing for creation of a single database on vocational training, development of financial sustainability and independency of non-state institutions, development of economic and social activity of groups of the population through various training programs.
