Skills mismatch
- The never ending saga of Sri Lanka’s job market-Tuesday 11th March 2014
The words skills mismatch entered Sri Lanka’s job market vocabulary after the first youth revolt in 1971.The Government of the day obtained the assistance of UNDP and ILO to get the services of Prof. Dudley Seers, Director of the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex, England, to look into the reasons for youth unrest. In a groundbreaking report, Dr. Seers pinpointed the skills mismatch which existed in the Sri Lanka employment scene as the fundamental reason for the unrest.
The process of education produced a type of youth whose skills were literacy in the national languages, some numeracy and knowledge in the humanities and social sciences, and little else, while the employment market, outside Government employment, which was at that time also saturated, demanded technical and vocational skills for the manufacturing and service sectors.
