2024-07-30 22:53:47
Young people in Huila need job opportunities. Deputy Virgilio Huergo spoke with Diario del Huila about the initiative, which has been in the works since the previous government. Y which links the Secretariat of Economic Development with the International Labour Organization – ILO.
HUILA DAILY, ECONOMY
By: Gustavo Patiño
With the aim of promoting youth employment in the department of Huila, work is being done on developing a strategy to promote employability in these sectors, through the creation of a model of youth employability and entrepreneurship. “This is seen as a challenge to address these gaps and barriers in terms of unemployment, in terms of informality, and in terms of developing the entrepreneurship of our youth in the department,” said Deputy Virgilio Huergo to Diario del Huila.
The initiative was developed based on a document prepared in conjunction with the International Labour Organization – ILO and the department’s Economic Development Secretariat. “Today we have managed to advance in a coordination between the Economic Development Secretariat and the ILO. This allows us to have a basis from scientific knowledge, which allows us to draw up some guidelines, some strategies, after of course identifying some problems, which lead us to generate alternatives, regarding the development of youth in terms of employment and employability,” said Huergo.
Youth unemployment
According to the document entitled “Model for Inclusion of Decent Work and Youth Entrepreneurship for the Department of Huila”, which was prepared by the previous departmental administration, Huila’s GDP has maintained a stable share of the national GDP, between 1.5% and 1.7%, in the last decade, although with irregular economic growth. The agricultural and tourism sectors are key to Huila’s economy, generating a significant number of jobs, especially in coffee production and tourism.
At the national and departmental labor level, a post-pandemic recovery is observed with participation and employment rates close to pre-pandemic levels, “with a youth unemployment rate of around 20%, lower than the national average, a relatively favorable environment is suggested for young people in search of job opportunities (…) At the national level, 55.7% of employed young people are in the informal sector,” the document states. However, challenges persist, such as a high rate of labor informality, which is 78.3% in Huila, and a considerable youth unemployment rate, although lower than the national average.
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NiNis, neither work nor study
As the document points out, at the national level the phenomenon of “NiNis” (young people who neither study nor work) is notable, with 24.4%, evidencing challenges in the labor and educational inclusion of young people, especially women, since 16% of that percentage are men between 15 and 29 years old, while for women of the same age it is 33%. In addition, structural barriers that affect the labor market and entrepreneurship are identified, such as the lack of investment in training and technology, the prevalence of microenterprises with low added value, the scarcity of innovative medium-sized companies, and a weak business culture. These barriers limit the creation of formal jobs and economic growth, perpetuating inequality and poverty.
Concrete actions
Huergo pointed out that it is important to gradually translate the document into concrete actions within the department, not only in public institutions, but also in the private sector and decentralized entities, “from the government, define actions that involve not only government institutions, but also academia, private enterprise, society, and that we all think about the development of Huila youth, that there is the possibility of generating scenarios such as youth employment fairs, where all the job offers in the city can be placed and young people can have the opportunity to prepare themselves and participate in order to access, for example, employment at the central government and decentralized entities level,” he said.
He pointed out that many young people are doing their internships, apprenticeships and judiciaries in companies or in the public sector only with the possibility of having ARL, “it is a call that we are making to the institutions, to the private companies, to the actors of the economic life of the department, to offer these possibilities to our young people, surely to have the possibility even to formally link up with the entities, to contribute their human talent, their knowledge and so on.”
Entrepreneurship
The document also diagnoses the situation of entrepreneurship in the country and the department, understanding that there are various types of entrepreneurship such as subsistence, inclusive, dynamic or high-impact, corporate, spin-off, social, cultural, technological and public; pointing out that entrepreneurship has several challenges, since many start out of necessity due to the lack of salaried employment, which gives rise to subsistence entrepreneurships with little sustainable economic impact.
Complex regulation, low internationalization and disconnection from global value chains limit the growth of high-impact ventures, which is why the document highlights the importance of aligning the educational system with the needs of the labor market, promoting technical and soft skills from secondary education, “this employability model is oriented towards the possibility of training these young people to be able to access employment, because many times job opportunities are lost due to not knowing how, for example, to present a job interview, due to lack of knowledge of the offer or the opportunities that different companies are generating today, whether public or private, so here we call for the generation of an entire system around job generation” added Huergo.
Digital divide
The document, in its diagnosis, points out that the digital divide is another challenge, especially for micro-enterprises that do not use the Internet, which limits their competitiveness. In rural areas, the low formal education of producers underlines the need to improve technical and technological education.
Likewise, access to financing is limited, with a low rating in financing for start-ups, especially for young entrepreneurs, so it is crucial to offer accessible credit lines and consolidate seed capital to maximize the impact of the resources, “that this model of employability and entrepreneurship is also articulated with the public policy of entrepreneurship, businessism and innovation that the department has today, that it is articulated to each of the funds that have been created and that are currently managed by, for example, Infihuila, which is the financial institute of the department of Huila, such as the entrepreneurship fund managed by this institution,” said the deputy for the Alianza Verde party.
Thinking about the future
The departmental legislator pointed out that the document has been an effort developed since the last four years, so they are working to advance its implementation in this government period, “it was the product of work we did 4 years ago in the previous government, where we managed to create a goal in the Development Plan for the formulation of this model and in this one we again established a goal that allows us to advance in the implementation and development of the same.”
“The idea is that an ordinance will then emerge that outlines some public policy guidelines to be able to materialize this idea, this initiative that we have been leading and are now consolidating in this study document, which everyone can now have in order to get a little closer to this reality and define more clearly this x-ray of unemployment, informality and entrepreneurship among young people in the department of Huila,” he said.
He added that “the call is for us to contribute to generating greater opportunities for an actor who is fundamental to the development, not only in the present, but also in the future of our society. The thing is, if we do not make the youth of today and today really productive, what will happen to them tomorrow? They will surely be waiting for a subsidy, waiting for support from the State and depending on the State, so the invitation is for us to look a little further and really project today a scenario that allows the youth to develop integrally and productively,” he concluded.