Unemployed criticise Access programme

Press, 12 July 1985, Page 4

Unemployed criticise Access programme

PA -Wellington A representative of unemployed groups says she has reservations about the Government’s proposal for further education and training for young people, announced on Wednesday.

Under the proposal, Labour Department training schemes would be gradually

replaced with new education and training schemes called Access. The national co-ordinator for unemployed groups throughout New Zealand, Ms Jane Stevens, said education did not create jobs.

“There doesn’t seem to be any over-all package to create jobs. The Govern-

ment appears to be doing nothing about creating jobs once the training is finished,” she said. The Labour Department’s director of training policy, Mr Max Kerr, said it would be able to help people much more effectively under Access than under existing training programmes.

“Access is a more comprehensive programme and places more emphasis on development of skills, and it is open to people whether they are registered as unemployed or not,” he said. The department had made many submissions to Governments over the years to bring together all the training programmes in a comprehensive way, Mr Kerr said.

Access would eventually replace the S.T.E.P.S. programme, the young person training programme, the work skills development programme, the voluntary organisations training programme and the adult retraining programme. To the end of May this year almost 14,000 people were participating in these programmes. Ms Stevens said unemployed groups were concerned that the education and training were relevant to the skills. She challenged figures presented at a press conference launching Access stating that 73 per cent of unemployed people were looking for less skilled work but only 44 per cent of vacancies were for the less skilled.

“The impression was given that the problem is a mismatch of skills rather than a problem of lack of jobs. That is not the case. The number of jobs available does not match the number of people unemployed,” she said.

Unless the Access schemes provided relevant skills in conjunction with job creation, they would not be of particular use to young people.

Ms Stevens said employers had “really been let off the hook” in terms of taking responsibility for training.