Brazil’s Ministry of Labor says that one of the country’s serious development bottlenecks is the lack of skilled workers. Brazilian companies are turning away people because they cannot perform certain tasks.
The Ministry says it has data showing that 60% of the people who go through the National Work System (Sine) (a government employment agency) do not get jobs because they have no marketable skills.
To deal with this problem, Minister of Labor, Luiz Marinho, and the president of the National Industrial Confederation, Armando Monteiro Neto, have signed a contract for the training of unemployed personnel.
The program will focus on low-income individuals, between the ages of 16 and 24, or over 40, women, households heads and the handicapped.
The program will train 10,000 workers over a four-year period in the areas of mechanics, maintenance and electricity and electronics. Pilot programs will begin in the states of Acre, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Sul.
Marinho declared that with the economy growing it is essential to have skilled people. "In a number of areas there are job openings but no one qualified to do the work," he said, adding that the new program will give skills to young workers.
Monteiro Neto declared that the Brazilian business community is more aware of its responsibilities, not only in jobs, but in social programs and protection of the environment.
He went on to say that the skilled worker was an important part of that new reality where education, health and social security it also important, along with the problems of discrimination, the handicapped and child labor.
Nowadays businesses are interested in a broad approach to worker quality of life in the communities where they exercise their activities, he declared.