PRIVATE sector employees with a monthly salary under BD200 will be included in a scheme to increase their incomes, the Minister of Labour, Dr Majeed bin Mohsen Al Alawi, said yesterday.

He said that these workers would be provided with financial support as well as training courses to enable them to get better jobs or promotion opportunities.

According to the minister, the scheme that is part of the National Training and Employment Programme (NEP) will start in the second half of 2006.

The minister’s statements came during a meeting with representatives of companies and businessmen at the ministry’s hall. The meeting also succeeded in generating 2,300 new job opportunities.

Dr Al Alawi ensured that the needed training courses would be provided to jobseekers according to their development requirements to enable them to get jobs in the private and the pubic sectors.

The meeting was part of a plan to strengthen partnership between the ministry and the private sector to make companies contribute more to the success of the NEP.

The minister urged the participants to accept jobseekers as workers or offer them training opportunities.

The minister praised the cooperation of the private companies in the development of the ministry’s training and unemployment programmes.

“The NEP stresses the benefits and interests of the three production sides of the labour market represented by the Trade Unions, The Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Government,” he said.

Dr Al Alawi stressed the importance of making the private sector more attractive for local work force, by creating a better working atmosphere and social security systems.

To motivate the role of the private sector in tackling unemployment, the minister said that the cooperative companies would be provided with the required facilities, including speeding up the processing of their work permits and reducing the percentage of Bahrainisation required to allow them to hire expatriates.

The Assistant Undersecretary of Labour Affairs, Jameel Humeidan, highlighted the importance of the current stage of the NEP and the need of the companies to show more cooperation by offering training or recruiting jobseekers who approach the ministry.

The companies’ representatives highlighted their keenness to cooperate with the ministry to seriously tackle the unemployment. They said that jobseekers with skills would be given BD200, BD250 for technical jobs and BD300 for specialised jobs and the jobseekers will receive more with the awards they would get from the ministry.