Iran and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) have developed a very effective cooperation on the issue of employment, Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare, Ali Rabiee, said on Wednesday, IRNA reported.
“Cooperation with UNIDO can help Iran use other countries’ experiences in dealing with the issue of unemployment,” He said while signing the MoU with UNIDO.
UNIDO is a specialized agency of the United Nations that promotes industrial development for poverty reduction, inclusive globalization and environmental sustainability.
The UNIDO’s mandate is to promote and accelerate inclusive and sustainable industrial development in developing countries and economies in transition.
Rabiee said that Iran and UNIDO have been able to conduct very successful and effective joint programs in developing steel industry, optimizing fuel consumption and shoe production. “About 1,000 job opportunities were created in the city of Mashhad through Iran-UNIDO joint program for shoe production,” he said.
The UN agency provides Iran with the knowledge and expertise to deal with the unemployment issue, Rabiee added.
Pointing to the employment in small and medium enterprises, he said, “Around 96% of the current job opportunities have been created by small and medium businesses,” the labor minister said. Given that the economy is stepping out of recession, there will soon be an increase in employment, he said.
He further said that recent attempts to promote employment have enabled Iran to form what he called “a specific model for employment.”
Since 1979, Iranian governments have been concerned about employment and have conducted different programs to create sustainable employment for the country’s young population.
The first such program that was conducted in the 1980s included creating job opportunities for unemployed high school graduates.
An emergency-employment plan, which was held a decade later, was a program through which the government provided loans of nominal value to the job seekers, so that they could create and run businesses on their own.
The last attempt to create employment was to promote the so-called quick-return businesses. The aim of the program was to create and support businesses that have the capacity to return the starting capital along with profits as early as possible.
