Dubai(IANS) : Admitting that the issue of unemployment is gaining a challenging dimension in the Gulf countries, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has called for concerted efforts of the Arab countries in tackling the problem that is “posing a real threat to socio-economic stability”.
“The Gulf countries today need to generate jobs, increase their share in the local labour market and involvement in the socio-economic development,” said Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, minister of governmental sector development.
“Addressing the issue of unemployment is a common responsibility and all government and private sector bodies should join forces with educational and training institutes to attain the optimum standard of efficiency and competence to tackle it,” news agency WAM quoted Al Mansouri as saying in his address to the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) forum on nationalisation and employment.
He urged the experts attending the conference to work out the best mechanism to combat unemployment, and regretted that practical and effective measures to solve the issue in some Gulf countries were still wanting.
He said that the Arab world needed to create more than 90 million jobs over the next two decades.
Speaking about the need for UAE to handle unemployment, Al Mansour explained that federation needed to create more than 800,000 jobs a year and most of them are to be provided by the private sector.