Unemployment in al-Shaddadi warns of serious consequences for the society

Part of the youth in the city of al-Shaddadi, in the countryside of Hasakah, northeastern Syria, suffers the lack of job opportunities and the high unemployment rate, amid the lack of new projects forcing a large number of them to leave the city in search of new job opportunities. 

Muhammad al-Ali, a citizen from al-Shaddadi told North-Press that the high rate of unemployment “has serious effects on the society, especially since most of those are young people, who may be forced to behave immorally like robbery, looting and others, if they are unable to obtain sources of income”.  

Al-Ali added that, due to the lack of sufficient job opportunities, a number of the city’s young people had emigrated out of the city to “secure their living”, calling on the concerned parties to find solutions for this problem before it gets worse.

Regarding the causes of unemployment, Omar al-Hassan, a citizen from al-Shaddadi said that the lack of new projects, the spread of “cronyism and favoritism within the institutions, and the lack of employment of qualified people”, had significantly contributed to the spread of this phenomenon.

“Because of cronyism, favoritism and administrative corruption, we see that the qualified people are unemployed, while people who don’t deserve the position they have reached”, al-Hassan added.

As for the ways to address this problem, the director of the Committee of Labor and Social Affairs in al-Shaddadi, Asaad al-Abdullah explained that they are receiving applications for applicants, whether from families of martyrs, or people with special needs, and from both genders, to submit it to the authorities which need employees or workers, without any distinction among them. 

Al-Abdullah stated that, they are archiving them all in an official record, and aren’t sending except to those who are looking for employees, pointing out that they are nominating more than the required number and sometimes more, where the appropriate applicants are being selected “to avoid favoritism”.  

Al-Abdullah noted that the specialties which suffer from the lack of job opportunities are “out of our control,” pointing out that, the most specialties which have job opportunities are education and agriculture.  

Concerning the employment in the oil sector, the director of the Committee noted that the employment in this sector is beyond their committee, pointing out that “if the employment in this sector was through our committee, there would be many job opportunities for young people”, expressing his dissatisfaction that the international organizations operating in al-Shaddadi only employ people from outside the city.  

Al-Abdullah stated that the priority in employment in the official departments is for the families of martyrs, noting that 40% of job opportunities are for families of martyrs, 10% for people with special needs, and 50% is for the rest of people, but the Institution of the families of martyrs tries to obsess more than its proportion, according to al-Abdullah.