To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.
The region's governments are investing heavily in training to solve widespread unemployment and overcome the serious skills shortage. Jacqueline Vitali reports
Increased foreign investment in Latin America has created a huge demand for skilled labour, and one of the main challenges now facing multinationals in the region is an acute skills shortage.
It is not that there is a shortage of people as there is in the West. Of an active population of approximately 152 million in the Latin American and Caribbean region, 12 million are unemployed, and of these, 6.6 million are young people. Therefore if the economic opportunities are to be maximised and the region is to continue to attract foreign investors, more training is desperately needed and government investment in training is seen as a priority.
The region's governments and organisations have gone to great lengths to organise training initiatives to bridge the skills gap. According to Fernando Vargas Z£¤iga, consultant of the International Labor Organisation (ILO), "In the past 20 years, all kinds of private training institutions have appeared in Latin America, with such a speed that Cinterfor [Centro interamericano de investigacion y documentacion sobre formacion profesional of Uruguay] has described it as a training 'explosion'. In Brazil, for example, Planfor [the national plan for professional education] has registered almost 16,000 training institutions; in Colombia, it is estimated that some 400 private training entities exist; in El Salvador, a proportion of the training of Insaforp [the Salvadorian Institute of Professional Development] is contracted through some 60 collaborating centres; in the Dominican Republic, training is in the hands of private institutions. In many cases, such institutions are closely linked with unions, syndicates or business chambers. Some of them were formed due to the inadequate responses of public institutions to fulfil the need for such training."
Governments in the region have also stepped up efforts to alleviate unemployment among the youth population. Proyecto Joven [Project for Youth], for example, has been set up in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Brazil to help improve
