The ineligible Bhutanese

June 11, 2012Posted inEmployment, Government45 Comments
What would you do if you found out that there's this job opening that would pay three times more but would be less demanding than your current job? You'd probably apply for it, right? How could you pass up an opportunity to earn three times your pay for actually doing less work? What would you expect if you found out that that job was in a government project, financed by government funds? You'd expect to get that job, right? And if you don't, you'd expect a more qualified and experienced fellow Bhutanese to get it. That's exactly what happened.…

Nervous and scared

February 2, 2012Posted inEmployment20 Comments
The Class XII results are out. 8,576 students took the exams last year. And a good 86% of them passed. They’ve completed school. Some of them will go to college. Some will undergo training. And the rest will enter the world of work. They’ve begun a brand new chapter in their lives, a chapter that should be full of promise and excitement. So we should be happy for them. And we should be excited for them. But I’m not. I’m not happy. And I’m not excited. Instead, I’m nervous. And I’m scared. More than 7,300 students passed the Class…

Falling unemployment numbers

July 4, 2011Posted inEmployment15 Comments
Between 2009 and 2010, unemployment in our country fell drastically, and impressively, from 4% to 3.3%. At least, that’s what the government has claimed. But some experts have questioned the low unemployment numbers. So I requested the labour minister for disaggregated data for 2009 and 2010 to study the reductions in unemployment rates. Two bits of interesting figures jumped out at me, as soon as I glanced at the data. The first was that between 2009 and 2010 unemployment for the age group 15 to 19 years fell 13.6 percentage points. Unemployment for this age group in 2009 was…

Unemployment news

April 20, 2011Posted inEmployment11 Comments
First the good news: unemployment has dropped from 4% to 3.3% and will be further reduced to 2.5% by 2013. The prime minister announced the good news in his State of the Nation report last year. The government reiterated the good news in January this year, during a review of the project Accelerating Bhutan’s Socio-economic Development. Now the not-so-good news: the government’s unemployment figures have been questioned, forcing them to “… refute allegations that the data they used to indicate drop in unemployment rate for 2010 was manipulated”. And finally the bad news: more than 6000 people applied for…

Jobs for Bhutan

October 18, 2009Posted inEmployment, Monarchy
As Bhutan is a small country with a small population we must never allow ourselves to reach a situation where we are unable to provide employment to our people. Ensuring that this does not happen is an important responsibility of the government. His Majesty the Fourth Druk Gyalpo, 17 December, 2000, Trashigang

Jobless in Bhutan

October 14, 2009Posted inEmployment, Youth
The results of the Labour Force Survey, 2009 has me worried: unemployment has jumped to 4%; and more than 80% of them are youth between the ages of 15 and 25. In absolute terms, 13,000 of the 325,700 economically active people are unemployed. And of them, 10,500 are youth. Youth between the ages of 15 and 19 are hit the hardest – 20.1% of them are unemployed. So last week’s job fair was a good idea. It sought to boost employment by bringing employers and jobseekers together. But, our labour minister’s statement at the job fair has me even…

Returning graduates

September 8, 2009Posted inEconomy, Employment, Youth8 Comments
Since the start of planned modern development in our country, one of our biggest constraints to progress has been the consistent shortage of human resources. We simply did not have enough skilled and qualified people required to initiate and sustain development. So when our students studying in India and beyond returned home after they graduated, we welcomed them back eagerly. And we were proud of the fact that they – almost every single one of them – chose to return home instead of working abroad. Not any more. Recently, 100 graduates completed a month-long training at Infosys. 37 of…

Unemployment: a big problem?

May 26, 2009Posted inEmployment, Youth
Somehow, during the last few weeks I've bumped into several young unemployed people. All of them complained that they tried hard, but couldn't get jobs. Some of them were continuing to aggressively seek work. But some had given up. I've also bumped into two groups of youth who are themselves employed, but are thinking about starting something that would help other young people get jobs. These two groups are unrelated. They don't know each other. But both groups are so convinced that unemployment is already a major problem that they have decided that they may have to take matters…

A second chance…

December 5, 2008Posted inEmployment, Government
During the Nasscom annual strategy meeting held in Thimphu last week, Narayana Murthy, Infosys Chairman, announced that he would train 100 Bhutanese in his company. The offer is timely and, if used well, would be the first significant step towards creating the knowledge and skills base required to develop a viable ICT industry in Bhutan.A similar offer was made by Thaksin Shinawatra, Thailand's PM, during his visit to Bhutan in June 2005. The visiting PM "…commended the Bhutanese's versatility with the English language…" and publicly announced that he would be prepared to employ many Bhutanese as English teachers in…

An overqualified sweeper?

December 2, 2008Posted inEmployment, People
Meet Sonam Choden. She’s 20 years old. She completed Class X from Motithang High School in 2005. A year later, she did a six month certificate course in IT at RIIT.She's employed as a sweeper in the National Assembly.Unemployment is real. It's serious. And it's growing.