The government continues to put in efforts to create more employment opportunities for Papua New Guineans through various policies and plans, including capturing it in the new Medium Term Development Plan (MTDP) 4.
Minister for Labour and Employment, Kessy Sawang made mention of this during question time in parliament this morning when responding to questions from the Member for Nipa Kutubu on the matter of unemployment in the country.
“I want to place on record that the Marape- Rosso Government is aware of the challenging times as we deal with employment and in the recent MTDP 4, the government has achievable plans to create jobs,” said the minister.
“My job is to come up with a strategy to support private sector to come up with employment opportunities.”
The minister plans on doing this through amending the country’s labour laws and the minimum wage threshold, which is at K3.5.
These will be done in alignment with the MTDP 4.
Minister Sawang also said a correct data on the labour market in the country is lacking and her ministry will be looking into that as well, so to have a well informed data available to guide decisions on addressing unemployment going forward.
She also said from other reliable data available, about 41, 000 jobs in the country have been taken up by foreigners, but she has assured that her ministry will ensure that 10, 000 of those jobs come back to Papua New Guineans.