Solomon Islands: A perspective on the need for job creation.
Apart from the urgent need for tackling climate change and effectively delivering adaptation measures to prevent sea water incursion, causing movements of people from risk areas, such as in the outer Reef Islands off Malaita, high unemployment or under employment, coupled with high population growth and low economic growth are the biggest challenges facing the Solomon Islands.
Political will, both at the political level and administrative level is there, I believe, for employment creation, but the fact is jobs are few at home and access to external labour markets still very limited.
When Foreign Minister, the Hon. Jeremiah Manele met with his Australian counterpart, Senator Marise Payne on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly a week a so ago, both foreign ministers acknowledged the win-win gains from the current arrangement of the Australian led‘ Labour Mobility’ scheme.
Senator Payne expressed her deep satisfaction with the conduct of Solomon Island workers, especially the women workers.
“Trainings, exposure to Australia experiences and remittances were some of the positive gains for workers,” she said.
While what Senator Payne was encouraging, the reality, as I see it, there have been few workers so far engaged in the Mobility Scheme and much, much more is needed to ensure jobs are created at home, especially jobs to accommodate the rural poor.
With China soon to be a dominant “partner on the block.” so to say, will employment prospects improve at home?
Maybe legislation changes will be needed to make the business environment more investor friendly for foreign investors. This would include adhering to the principles of sound economic policies for growth and addressing market access issues.
Secure access to land is an issue for foreign investors, including micro-enterprises, and I see being problematic for customary land owners.
While the Chinese Government may not have clearly articulated “country strategies,” Chinese officials in the Pacific have said that they want to diversify their development assistance and have identified four main areas of focus: infrastructure and public services; production and technical services; human resources and capacity enhancement; and regional funding.
Taking such an assurance at face value, if the Chinese do genuinely want to help the Solomon Islands in the four areas outlined, and then there will be immediate skills shortages and mismatches in technical skill shortages and an over-supply of unskilled workers and those of higher education standards.
The public sector accounts for the overwhelming majority of formal employment in the Solomons, but more opportunities must be created in the private sector and become a central component of SIG policy in all employment creation programmes.
I expect when the government puts forward its key development expectations of China there will be some key industries with potential for contributing to economic growth and employment generation for skills development. The tourism and related sectors could be considered a priority.
Whatever develops from now on in the pursuit of aid, in the general sense, to the Solomon Islands, the SIG should be watchful of the conditions of using Chinese contractors implementing aid projects for, apart from the tendency of seeing the arrival of Chinese workers to supervise and implement the particular projects, the very process of negotiating a contract and financing arrangements are fraught with political, technical and language barriers.
Yours sincerely
Frank Short
