Fighting the ghost that is haunting the world

By Erdinc Ergenc

Ankara (Dunya) - There are thousands of bureaucrats in the Turkish capital always busy with complex projects running and working overtime, sometimes getting too exhausted with the responsibilities to transform old institutions into competitive and innovative facilities. But the hardest post in Turkish capital belongs to Nusret Yazici, who is desperately seeking for jobs for over 3 million people. Dr. Yazici heads the Turkish public employment service, Iskur.

As Iskur’s General Manager, Dr. Nusret Yazici is new to the 66-year old institution. Only six months in office, he has to beat back unemployement to a low 5% by 2023, the 100th anniversary of the republic. The current unemployment rate floats between 8% and 10 % and it is relatively low when compared with the main trading partners of Turkey, the EU where a frightening ghost is haunting the skies: high unemployment.

In an soft landing economy, employment rates are so volatile they cause controversy for many. But Dr. Yazici is calm in his office, facing Ankara’s busiest avenue, close to the Parliament and the Prime Ministry. Every single change in employment rate either relieves or raises tensions in the capital. Dr. Yazici has plans to relieve politicians from their biggest fear of high unemployment rate and the turmoil accompanying that but that brings him the hard task to be accomplished.

Creating employment
His main project is to overcome unemployment by creating jobs in the institution itself. It may seem irrelevant however the personnel he is recruiting are job and vocation advisors or mentors.

His institution’s personnel are expected to double in a year in December. More than 2,800 mentors are already employed in the institution. And around 1,200 more are to be recruited before the year’s end. These individuals will be visiting companies to learn what kind of labor they seek and get in contact with unemployed to bring the two sides together. Employment fairs are being organized and the agency opens booths in the crowded squares of cities and in shopping malls to get in touch with the unemployed.

Mentors are not the only hope to bring down the relatively high unemployment rate. An on-the-job training program of TL50 million is to give 50,000 people the chance to be interns in a decent workplace. Iskur will pay a minimum amount of spending money to the interns and most importantly cover insurance fees for interns for a six-month period.

Companies are allowed to recruit 10% their total number of their employees as interns. The project is aimed at doubling the rate of employment after training when compared with the traditional classroom training model. Half of the interns in on-the-job training program are recruited by the companies at the end of six month period, according to Iskur.

105,000 open positions
Social security and tax subsidies are other vehicles for Dr. Yazici to fight unemployment. Iskur covers social security and other fees for a minimum of six months to a maximum of 56 months for the new employed.

Mr. Yazici says Iskur helped 423,000 people to be recruited in decent jobs, some 125,000 of them women in the first 10 months of this year. But the most striking number about the unemployment is certainly the 105,000 open positions that can’t be met with the current talents of the unemployed. The number rose to 114,000 in September but again decreased in October. Mr. Yazici says they have been conducting a research to find out the reason of this mismatch.

“There are over 3.312 million people registered in Iskur seeking jobs. Of these 2.204 million are jobless and the remaining more than a million are not happy with their current jobs. Iskur registers over 1 million and 200 thousand new jobless annually,” says Dr. Yazici.

The number of job seekers between 15 and 24 without a decent job is at record heights in the world. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), over 75 million youth worldwide are looking for jobs and not finding them, sometimes the search lasts for more than one year. Young people today are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults.

The situation is not expected to get any better before 2016, ILO says. Young unemployment in Turkey is 16%, twice the general rate. Half of total unemployed are between 15-29 year olds. And 40% of women are facing longer periods of unemployment than men. Above 40 percent of 20-39 unemployed experience longer than a year jobless, according to Iskur data.

Private agencies no rivals
Iskur has finished the preparations for the new private employment agency regulation. There are already 327 private employment agencies working in Turkey, however Iskur is the only one working without demanding a fee. All Iskur services are free of charge but Mr. Yazici says they are not competing
with private agencies.

“We don’t see them as rivals. We want to increase the number of high quality employment agencies and ask them to work like Iskur. We are promoting them. The regulation will be finished before the end of November.”

Turkey has turned into a country exporting labor, thanks to the construction and contractor companies growing abroad. Russia and Iraq are the main destinations for Turkish workers, both received over 11,000 people. Also 4,000 Turkish citizens went to Turkmenistan to work and more than 2,500 more to Saudi Arabia in the Jan-Oct period of 2012.

Changing DNA
Things are changing like the DNA of the employment which was dominated by the public sector until 2005. Now private sector demand for new personnel surpasses the public sector, reversing the roles for the driving force in the employment.

In the last decade the number of workers in the social security system have doubled in Turkey, which is a sign of a modest revolution but it was also accompanied by the tripling number of the registered unemployed workforce.

The reason behind the surge is the unemployment fund that has distributed TL5.3 billion ($2.9 bln) in the last decade. Some 2.718 million jobless has received the pay. Dr. Nusret Yazici has a billion dollar budget to break down unemployment and catch up with the Republic’s 100th year targets. He already finished his budget in the first 10 months of 2012 but he is not out of fuel.

He now works more than 12 hours a day and recalls the early days of his
post which he thought he might ease things in a few months. As Iskur’s general manager, he is now on the board of World Association of Public Employment Services (WAPES) and attends meetings to oversee global problems. But only numbers will decide his success.