Iraq's Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has announced a training programme for the unemployed that seeks to reinforce their skills and help them plan entrepreneurial projects.
The ministry's vocational training department seeks to improve its training schemes by adopting non-traditional programmes such as the "al-Riyada" (Pioneering) programme, expected to launch midyear.
"The programme teaches the unemployed how to plan well for their private projects, and conduct studies on economic feasibility, as well as identify the requirements to complete them to ensure their success and development, which would be of benefit for the owners and society in general," said the department's general director Aziz Ibrahim Khalil.
According to Khalil, this type of training is important as it enables people to benefit from the start-up loans and operational cash advances the ministry offers to small, income-generating projects, which can help people meet their daily needs, improve their standard of living and boost the process of national development and economic growth.
"The department has worked to train thousands of people who have registered their names in the ministry's unemployment database, and from 2005 to date, has trained more than 130,000 unemployed persons at 36 vocational training centres in Baghdad and other Iraqi provinces," he said.
For the original February 27, 2014 piece from Mawtani.com, a service of Al-Shorfa referenced in this summary, click here.