Amman, Jordan 16 - 23 November 2019 - The International Labour Organisation (ILO) under the umbrella of “Applying the G20 Training Strategy Project: A Partnership of the ILO and the Russian Federation”, facilitated two workshops on validating the results of field study examining the skills needs in the garment & leather sector and the chemical & cosmetics sector that has been carried out based on the ‘Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification’ (STED) methodology.

The workshops took place on 16 - 23 November 2019 in Amman; they were attended by representatives from the public sector, training providers, Ministry of Labour and representatives from Jordan Chamber of Industry.

The studies were conducted in response to the roadmap put forward by the National Strategy for Human Resource Development (NSHRD 2015-2020), the ILO in collaboration with National Sector Skills Councils (NSSCs) in the Garment & Leather (G&L) industry and the Chemical & Cosmetics (C&C) industry. The councils are national bodies operating under the recently established Skills Development Commission (Law No. 19, 2019) and are mandated with bridging the gap between education/training and the needs of the labour market in their respective sectors.

The Chairman of the NSSCs and Representative of the Leather & Garment sector at the Jordan Chamber of Industry Mr. Ihab Al Qadri highlighted the importance of this kind of workshops saying: “ The concept of the study was not initiated before for the NSSC so, I believe that the workshop put the sector forward to explore the preliminary results of the statistics and provided us with guidance towards the future of Sector Skills Council work in the Garment and Leather industry".

The Chairman of the NSSCs and Representative of the Chemical & Cosmetics sector at the Jordan Chamber of Industry Mr. Ahmad Albess expressed the importance of the study, he explained that “the study aimed at exploring the possibility of increasing the capacity of the chemical & cosmetics sector to recruit and absorb a number of Jordanian workers in all industrial areas, this will increase the growth of the sector and achieve its desired goals”.

The studies is based on a survey developed with the participation of a representative sample of firms and training providers operating in the above mentioned sectors. It serves the purpose of identifying strategic skills needs, assessing the gap between supply and demand, and highlighting the different issues faced by the sectors, including business capability gaps and business environment challenges. The results will feed into comprehensive sector skills strategies to be developed by the NSSCs at a later stage.