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CEPD Maps out Measures to Solve Taiwan's Personnel Shortage

2013/12/16 | By Judy Li

Seeing the growing difficulty of finding suitable staff among enterprises due likely to regressive pay scale and ease of entering college, Taiwan's Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) has hence mapped out measures to solve the problem.

C. M. Kuan, chairman of CEPD, indicates that Taiwan's enterprises have in recent years complained of the shortage of suitable personnel as the educational system here seems unable to train well-educated graduates, resulting in lack of managerial  professionals and entry-level  workers, yet an oversupply of incompetent middle-level workforce.

CEPD plans to help enterprises reinforce cultivation of staff, encourage investments in setting up job-training centers, and subsidize enterprises to train and cultivate employees.

To enhance national competitiveness, CEPD is required to build a labor pool for industries in need over the next decade, particularly for such sectors as finance, MICE, tourism, food & beverage, creative culture, and  transnational logistics.

Kuan says that Taiwan's manufacturers should enhance  manufacturing technologies and restructure manufacturing from turning out parts to finished items, and should also avoid focusing on  the China market to evade over-reliance on and manipulation by a single market. Instead, Taiwan should work on  exploring other export outlets and sign free trade agreements with global trade partners.

A recent survey by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) shows that Taiwan's enterprises expect to see net increase of 29,296 employees in the first quarter of 2014. Of the polled, 21.73% will see more employees in the first quarter of 2014 than the fourth quarter of 2013, versus 5.19% to see the opposite, with 62.96% to see  the number unchanged and 10.12% haven't decided yet. (JL)