The young people in the Republic of Moldova, who do not study and do not work, being called the NEET youth, cannot learn a profession because some of the professional qualification services are at a big distance from their home. Also, some of the young people cannot study a job because they have minor children at home and do not have in whose care to leave them during several weeks to attend the professional qualification courses, said officials of the National Youth Council of Moldova who are involved in a pilot project on the NEET young people, IPN reports.
The Council’s secretary general Roman Banari said that the NEET rate among people aged between 15 and 29 in Moldova is of about 27%. It is very high compared with the neighboring countries (Romania – 20.9%, Ukraine – 18.7%) and other countries of the region. “Statistics show that in the EU member states where the NEET rate does not exceed the region average (14.8%), a loss of about 1.2% of the GDP is estimated there, while in the countries with a NEET rate that is higher than 20%, the losses represent over 2% of the GDP,” he stated.
According to Roman Banari, the project is implemented by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Social Protection with support from the World Health Organization and is piloted in the districts of Căușeni and Cantemir. If it’s implemented successfully in the given districts, the project will be extended to cover the whole country. A Government decision to this effect is yet needed and this is the condition imposed by the WHO. The project is designed to identify the NEET young people and to help them find a job or to offer them services so that they could start and develop a business.
“A large part of the NEET youth is under the supervision of social workers. This shows that they form part of socially deprived categories and have low incomes. Also, many NEET young people could not be found at their place of residence and they can be thus abroad. Over 90% of the young people in the Republic of Moldova, who took part in a survey carried out by the National Youth Council, said they want to go abroad, while 64% of them said they intend to migrate because they want to find a decent job abroad as they disagree with the remuneration mechanisms in our country,” said Roman Banari.
He also said that to solve the problems of the NEET young people, the state should create a service to identify these persons, to involve them in the services they need, either education or employment ones. “There are social assistants in Moldova who could identify the NEET young people, but these employees have a loaded work program and do not have time to deal with these people,” explained Roman Banari. The Council recommends the employees of the national youth centers to set up a network by which they could engage the young people in training for their personal and professional development.
