PM Sellal: “Locally-based residents to be given priority in job opportunities”

In keeping with a Premiership guideline number 142 dating to July 29th 2013, the Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal has ordered the local and provincial authorities to give top priority to locally-based residents of every municipality or province of the country in terms of employment opportunities.

Mr Sellal enjoined all the relevant authorities to strictly abide by the ministerial decree 12/194 issued to this effect stressing that any malpractice or drift in the proper allotment to jobs to those fully eligible by those in charge of the burning employment file notably in the long-neglected southern regions of Algeria would be sanctioned.

The Premiership’s instruction is part of series of measures to fight the chronic unemployment excluding thousands of Algerian youths from the labour market, mainly in the southern parts of the country.

Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, is seeking to foster what some commentators described as a “Marshall Plan” for southern Algeria forcing the enterprises operating in the area to hire local workers as a top priority .

The recruitment of labor outside the wilayas (provinces) is only allowed, under “exceptional” derogations, for jobs that cannot be filled by locals, said the Prime Minister in instructions to the southern Wilayas and companies based there.

The measures also provide for granting easy loans without interest to young entrepreneurs and unemployed persons wishing to create their own micro-business.

Meanwhile, ministerial departments and state-owned enterprises are urged to grant sub-contracting deals to the micro-businesses to be set up in the context of these incentives to employment.

The Prime Minister also decided the creation of an energy-related vocational training center in the south before the end of next April and called local enterprises to ensure the training of unskilled workers.

For its part, the General Confederation of Algerian Enterprises (the C.G.E.A), the employers’ association that musters most Algerian private enterprises, announced a redeployment and investment plan in the southern provinces.

The C.G.E.A chairman who said the plan will be implemented very soon pointed out that investments in the south are a top emergency.

 All these sudden moves are made by the government in an attempt to allay the anger of youths, hardly hit by the endemic plague of unemployment.

According to the Algerian authorities and the International Monetary Fund, 21.5 percent of Algerians under 35 are unemployed. The rate stands at 10 percent for the entire population.

The situation of young people in the South is even more difficult in view of the low development level in the region. The region is also said to be lacking local skilled labor, while many university graduates are on the dole because of the inadequacy of the syllabuses with the needs of the labor market.