Chief of Staff to the Minister of Employment and Vocational Training, Abdelkader Jamali, Thursday, said that that the ministry aims to create 132,000 jobs in 2024. Answering questions from MPs on the draft budget of the Employment and Vocational Training Ministry for the financial year 2024, he added that the department seeks to decrease unemployment rates thanks to active employment programmes by creating 104,000 job opportunities through the implementation of the Initiation Programme to Professional Life. He underscored that the ministry seeks to create 11,000 job opportunities as part of the Civil Service Contract (CSC) which help young people acquire professional experience in associations. The recruitment programme dedicated to university graduates would make it possible to reach 6,800 integration contracts, he added. Jamali underlined that a new programme will be dedicated to long-term job seekers, based on the training and rehabilitation of 8,000 beneficiaries within the framework of agreements si gned between professional training centers and economic institutions. He stated that the ministry managed to control the evolution of the unemployment rate, which was stable at 15.8% between 2021 and 2023. Achieving an economic growth rate of 1% would help create 15,000 to 20,000 jobs, he said. He added that achieving a growth rate of 2% would help generate 30,000 to 35,000 jobs, reiterating that «in Tunisia, there are 60,000 new higher education graduates and 22,000 vocational training graduates each year, i.e. an average of 80,000 new job seekers each year.» Jamali clarified that the findings of the survey, carried out by the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training, showed that the integration rate in the Initiation Programme to Professional Life reached 52%, i.e. the same integration rate recorded by the employment programme for university graduates, known as the Dignity Contract, or «Karama». Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse