With 42,000 unemployed people in Mauritius (Statistics Mauritius, 2012),
there is the urgent need to create jobs in the country to cope with impending
job crisis. A lot of school leavers, with or without the requisite school level
qualification, enter the job market with little or no prospect for a job. There
has been continuous effort from various institutions like the Ministry of
Employment, the Human Resource Development Council and the National
Empowerment Foundation to develop skills and competences for individuals
in sectors like ICT, literacy and numerical skills; including various
employable skills in sectors like hotel and catering, tourism, handicraft, etc.
There is however, a need to develop economic empowerment whereby
young people would be able to benefit from well defined and targeted HRD
programmes to enable them build up their employment skills. This paper
agreed that HRD programmes have to be targeted and developed for tertiary
level students who are quite vulnerable to fall in the unemployment trap.
While they could be independent and capable of contributing financially to
the family, they could also move forward on being financially independent,
innovative and competitive. The study explained that a properly defined
HRD strategy for school leavers in terms of traineeship in selected areas
could be the starting step to economic empowerment.