On December 12, the Prime Minister of Georgia Lado Gurgenidze visited the Vocational Training Center of the Ministry of Education and Science and met with the representatives of various businesses. He was accompanied by the Minister of Education and Science Maia Miminoshvili.
The Prime Minister gave positive assessment to the newly rehabilitated, modern school. He underlined that in 2007, rehabilitation of 10 schools was accomplished and approximately same number of education centers will be renovated on the public funds in 2008.
As Lado Gurgenidze noted, together with the private sector, the opportunities of enhancing this process by means of joint work of the state and business representatives were discussed. Today, there are 38 vocational schools in Georgia. Apart from this, sufficient number of facilities which are still state owned (yet no more in utilization) can be quite fit enough for housing the vocational schools. For this purpose, from January, conditioned privatization of the public facilities will start so that the private persons would be authorized to establish (on their own) similar schools or training centers. These schools can be of single profile or multi-profile or several sectors can be merged, for instance, the builders and developers. A vivid example of this is a new banking training center. This resource can be used in a maximum way because the government will never be as effective, flexible or swift as the business sector might be.
We have been discussing unemployment widely and the above mentioned means is one of the most effective and productive ways of reducing unemployment rate. There are a lot of vacancies yet there are not enough specialists equipped with relevant working skills. The graduates of this type of schools will be dozens and hundreds of specialists, who will receive education through such programs; they will be of great demand on behalf of the business sector and be controlled by the employers as well.
With this in view, frequent and periodic training courses can be started or classical two-year studies can be established; a combination of both types would also be a possibility. Today, we are trying to introduce this initiative and then put the innovation to practice.
The press center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia