Amid mismatch between courses offered by institutions of higher learning and demand of the labour market, plans are afoot to establish a unit that will identify needs of the market and guide students accordingly.
The unit, which is expected to be operational by the end of this year, will be known as Tertiary Education Labour Market Observatory (TELMO), it has been learned.
“It will start as a unit within the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training and later upgraded into a full-fledged government agency,” according to National Project Coordinator for Science, Technology and Higher Education Programme (STHEP), Dr Kennedy Hosea.
Dr Hosea said the government had commissioned a consultant to work on the issue by engaging other stakeholders such as the Association of Tanzania Employers (ATE), among others.
“The consultant report is expected anytime from now so that the unit can become operational by December, this year,” Dr Hosea said in Dar es Salaam on Monday during an interview with journalists.
He said the system has been used in other African countries as well as in the developed world to ensure that institutions of higher learning offer courses that are needed in the labour market.
“The problem we are facing as a country is that we offer courses that may not be needed in the labour market and as a result we end up having graduates who can hardly get jobs,” Dr Hosea explained.
He added that the unit will guide students who have completed Form Six to select marketable courses in varsities to enable them get jobs when they graduate.
Latest estimates from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) as of 2011 show that there were about 2.4 million people who were unemployed, equivalent to 10.7 per cent of the labour force population.
“We are waiting for funds from the government to conduct a survey on the employment rate in Tanzania. The latest figure that we have was just an estimate,” according to the NBS’s Director of Population, Census and Social Statistics, Mr Ephraim Kwesigabo.
NBS conducted during the year an Integrated Labour Force Survey, which showed that 2,194,392 people were unemployed, then equivalent to 11.7 per cent of the labour force.
The envisaged observatory unit is part of the STHEP, a project which started in the year 2008 and set to end in February, next year. The project is funded by the World Bank (WB) through a soft loan of US 100 million dollars (about 160bn/-).
The WB-funded project is based on four major areas namely staff development, civil works, procurement of goods and consultancy services in addition to policy capacity building and curriculum review.
A total of 15 public institutions from Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar are benefiting from the multi-million project, Dr Hosea noted.
In another development, Dr Hosea said plans were also underway to establish a fund to be called Flexible Financing Facility (FFF), to assist higher institutions of learning to acquire funds for research and other activities.
The coordinator said he expected contributions to the funds from development partners, private sector, employers and other stakeholders.
He was also optimistic that the facility will go a long way in supplementing government’s efforts to improve tertiary education in the country.
By ALVAR MWAKYUSA, Tanzania Daily News
