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Govt to work with 'kos-kosan' start-up Mamikos in pre-employment card program
The pre-employment cards aim to help job seekers by granting them access to training.
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Visitors study job vacancies at the Talent Fair 2019 job fair in Jakarta on July 30, 2019. (JP/Donny Fernando)
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obseekers may soon find it easier to find a place to stay when they take vocational classes under the pre-unemployment card program outside their hometown, following the government’s latest partnership, a presidential official has said.
The Presidential Office (KSP) special economy advisor Denni Puspa Purbasari said after a public discussion on Tuesday that the government would help promote kos-kosan (rooming houses) from the listing application Mamikos to ease housing access for pre-employment card recipients.
“We have also urged investors behind Mamikos to invest more in acquiring residential houses and maybe turning them into like mini-Airbnb properties,” she said.
She expressed the hope that such schemes would entice applicants in less centralized regencies to apply for the program in groups and rent the kos-kosan before they take classes at the learning centers.
The pre-employment cards aim to help job seekers by granting them access to training as the government seeks to address the nation’s shortage of skilled workers. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration has allocated Rp 10.3 trillion (US$752.24 million) for the program this year.
Read also: 'It will be like Go-Food': Jobseekers in Java to get pre-employment cards in April
The training program’s costs were estimated to be between Rp 3 million and Rp 7 million for each pre-employment cardholder, which includes a Rp 500,000 monthly meal allowance
Denni expected the participants would be able to draw ideas from living and exploring a new city and take such inspiration back to their hometown to set up a business, among other examples.
“It will create an ecosystem of learning and exchanging ideas,” she said.
The skills gap has become a real problem in the country’s workforce as the education system has failed to produce graduates with the skills needed by industry.
A 2018 study by the McKinsey Global Institute and the World Bank predicted there would be a shortage of 9 million skilled and semiskilled workers in the digital sector in Indonesia between 2015 and 2030.
Currently, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data reveals that 6.24 percent of the country’s 6.82 million unemployed individuals are university graduates. The unemployment rate for graduates of vocational schools, which train students for specific jobs, is most alarming at 8.63 percent of the workforce in February 2019, followed by high school graduates at 6.78 percent.
