Trading course for newly unemployed

JAKARTA (JP): Central Jakarta mayoralty has been selected for a pilot project designed to return people recently made redundant to work, Mayor Andi Subur Abdullah said yesterday.

The project, scheduled to begin next Friday, will initially include 200 participants from the mayoralty's 44 subdistricts, he said.

Each subdistrict is required to send four or five of its residents for a week's training in the sale of staple foods. Participants are required to be junior high school graduates and to have recently lost their job, Andi said.

Each of the participants in the week-long training course will be provided with between Rp 200,000 and Rp 300,000 in cash, which is to be used as capital to purchase foodstuffs which they will then sell.

The initial capital must be returned within six months, with no interest due. "We hope that after that period, the vendors will be independent," he said.

The project is being jointly run by the mayoralty, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Manpower.

The ministries will organize the training and support the fund, while the mayoralty provides manpower, the mayor said.

During the one week training course, participants will be trained on trade and management.

Subdistrict chiefs will then carefully determine the location for the new traders to set up their businesses.

In Central Jakarta, the number of people thought to have recently lost their job has so far reached 180,000. (ind)