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The Human Resources Development Service (HRD), headed by Yu Jae-sub, spent a total of 40 billion won over the last three years supporting young people’s overseas training or internships, but the results have been disappointing with only 30 percent of those involved managing to sign work contracts afterward, Rep. Cha Myeong-jin of the ruling Grand National Party said Thursday.
From 2007 to 2009, a total of 16,484 young people were sent to companies abroad for training, which could possibly lead to a job contract. However, 28 percent dropped out halfway through, while only 30.8 percent, or 3,301 people, of those who finished courses were offered fulltime jobs, Cha said during the National Assembly’s annual audit.
“The figures indicate that the public corporation has spent an average of 12 million won per person who found a job. We must question whether spending 12 million won to create a single job is efficient,” Cha said.
Cha blamed the corporation’s poor selection and slack management of agencies in charge of training arrangements. Currently, the HRDS selects about 100 private companies a year.
But in 2008, four of them did not manage to match a single applicant with a job offer and one of them posted a 95 percent dropout rate, Cha revealed. Still the HRDS maintained contracts with them the following year.
“We need a major reshuffle in the system. We need a tighter selection process of the companies and constant monitoring on both them and the trainees,” Cha said.
The service admitted to the poor record but blamed the global economic meltdown. “From 2004 and 2006, the employment rate reached 54.7 percent but the global financial crisis in 2008 changed this. Not many people were willing to hire foreigners,” Park Wun-young, an HRDS official, said.
He said the gap between what trainees want and what potential employers want also accelerated the dropout syndrome. “Most of the applicants want to work in Canada, Australia and other countries. But in reality, the largest employers are Chinese trading firms,” Park said.
“Some trainees realized that working in a foreign environment wasn’t so attractive, while others them fail to pass the language qualification test which bars them from getting a job at the end of the day.”
The HRDS said it toughened the screening of applicants this year, and so far the dropout rate has fallen to 11 percent, Park said.
“We will keep our eyes on the companies, too,” he added.
