The Commissioner of Labour (COL) Josiah Manehia assures the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that his division will work on establishing an employment data, to identify number of people formally employed in the country.
This came after PAC members were told there was no any data of employment population in the country.
PAC members said, having such data could be useful as a guideline for the DCC government to work on by improving employment rate in Solomon Islands.
Commissioner of Labour admits before the PAC members that his office does not have such information since they are relying more on statistic office for information on that.
“I am surprise you don’t have the data that the ministry need to look at,” Chairman of PAC Rick Hou uttered.
Manehia stated that they use to receive data in the past years but no longer have it now.
“In 2015 plan we should have a system to capture employment data,” he added.
“Hopefully we have that on monthly bases,” Manehia further stated.
The DCC government is focusing on reducing unemployment by engaging the productive population age group into economic activities, which will boost the country’s economy and pave way for more development opportunities to take place in the country.
The question of unemployment and employment data was asked by the Opposition Leader Jeremiah Manele, who wants to know more about this information which is necessary to the work of the Labour division, and even for the reigning government to know so that appropriate steps could be taken to address unemployment.
Mr Manehia stated that this would be taken onboard this year and they expected other relevant authorities such as the office of the statistics could work along with them to capture employment data.
By AATAI JOHN
