ALMATY – The city’s municipal employment centre in 2013 conducted an outreach campaign to educate its residents about Kazakhstan’s Employment 2020 initiative.
The centre distributed print and video information about the initiative’s Employment Roadmap on television and newspapers, throughout the city’s bus and subway system and at Almaty’s universities.
The Employment 2020 programme is part of the country’s 2050 Strategy and is meant to use employment as a form of fundamental social protection in all sectors of the country’s population.
According to Almaty Employment Centre Director Orynkyz Zhebegenova, the city has spent 362.7 million tenge (US$2.33 million) of 366.1 million tenge (US$2.35 million) allocated by the national government for the campaign on job skills and training development. Training and retraining courses have been opened at seven schools covering such high-demand fields as confectionery, hairdressing and cosmetics, accounting, cooking, computers, tourism, electronics and mechanics.
Currently, 740 people are attending these classes, which 527 people have already completed. Of those 527, 26.8 percent or 141 people, over the last year found jobs. The campaign also provided its 698 participants with social-sector jobs and 797 people were sent to youth practice which helps them find employment later. Contracts were also signed with 160 employers, including businesses, government entities and nongovernmental organizations for them to accept people who received retraining through the employment support programme. Also, 563 people completed youth practice with 307 (54.5 percent) of them receiving permanent jobs after that.
The Almaty employment centre’s outreach effort also included participating in job fairs with the support of the Almaty Department on Employment and Social Programmes and its district offices. A job fair was also organized by the Almaty branch of the Nur Otan party, which attracted more than 100 large and medium-sized enterprises.
This year the city employment centre will continue its work to raise awareness about the opportunities and benefits of the Employment 2020 programme.
