Professionals from Europe, the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa are taking part in the international conference of the Public Employment Services (PES) on the theme: “Balancing between the local and international labour market: Challenges and Resolutions,” hosted on October 13-14 in Tunis, reads a press release by France’s embassy in Tunis.
Organised at the initiative of the National Agency for Employment and Self-employment (ANETI) in partnership with the French Office of Immigration and Integration (OFII), under the the European Union-funded project “Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance and Labour Mobility in North Africa” THAMM-OFII, the conference seeks to initiate debate on the challenges related to the adjustment between the local and international labour markets.
The conference further aims to encourage collective consideration of complex issues such as professional mobility, matching between available skills and job opportunities, information on labour markets, coordination between employment and training policies, collaboration between public employment services and economic players and dialogue between countries of origin and host countries.
It is also an opportunity to discuss current trends in the local and international labour markets, the role of public employment services in resolving imbalances, circular migration at the service of sustainable economic development, the development of partnerships to facilitate professional mobility and new opportunities for accessing the international labour market, thanks to digital transformation and virtual mobility.
Representatives of several countries, such as Algeria, Germany, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Spain, Portugal, France, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania and Senegal are taking part in this conference.
Taking the floor, Director General of Overseas Recruitment and Foreign Workers at the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training Ahmed Messaoudi said that migration is a source of economic, social and cultural wealth for all stakeholders, pointing to the need tackle it in all its aspects, reads an Employment Ministry press release.
He underlined in this regard, the need to embrace international policies based on partnership in order to combat irregular migration and achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
The Employment and Vocational Training Ministry in partnership with OFII, has started to set up a monitoring system to keep abreast of developments in the job market in Tunisia and overseas, and to identify needs in terms of skills and specialised, qualified labour, he indicated.
For her part, ANETI Managing Director Farihane Korbi Boussofara underscored the need for the governance of skills and to forge new partnerships to devise specific strategies for organised professional mobility.
She further called for a participatory support and assistance system to be set up to organise recruitment operations overseas in line with international standards.
France’s ambassador to Tunisia Anne Guéguen indicated that Tunisia is a country brimming with skills, underlining the need to step up coordination between all the stakeholders in the overseas employment field in order to help young people and professionals work legally on the international labour market.
Italy’s Ambassador to Tunisia Fabrizio Saggio commended for his part, the progress made in implementing the various cooperation programmes with the Employment and Vocational Training Ministry in the overseas recruitment field.
Training should comply with the international labour market, he added, indicating that 900 Italian companies based in Tunisia have considerable needs in terms of human resources, while the number of jobseekers is constantly on the rise.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse