Korean society is ageing faster than any other on the planet, so jobs for the elderly is not just simply about finding people something to pass the time in their senior years. Providing able and ambitious senior citizens quality jobs also elates to improving national competitiveness.
The Health and Welfare Ministry has released outlines for elderly job creation in 2005. Its goal is to create 100,000 jobs for people over 65, beginning with 35,000 jobs using W42.5 billion in budgetary expenditures. The type of jobs include 22,750 "public service" positions that among other things includes street cleaning, 7,000 "education welfare-type" positions that among other things includes cultural and historical site interpreters, and 5,250 ""independent support-type" positions such as jobs in subways and as delivery personnel.
It all sounds nice but in fact if you look at it closely you see most of the work is simple labor and little different from existing work programs for the poor. The funds for it, too, amount for no more than W200,000 a month per person for six months. That's not job creation its "spending money" and nothing sort of a typical example of an armchair policy initiative exaggerated by government bureaucrats.
According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, between 800,000 and 900,000 of the 4 million citizens over 64 have a desire to work. With their wisdom and experience, using senior citizens in the workforce would be plus for the economy and maximize individual sense of worth. If the jobs created were to be quality jobs, creating even 10,000 would have considerable effect. It might be worth thinking of putting the test program started last year for senior citizen job training to greater use and developing it as an example of job creation. There should also be no hesitation in spending the funds and personnel that would be necessary to help seniors make contact with companies that they can be competitive in, such as computer processing assistants.
While we have noted this many times before, there has to be an end to policies aimed at nothing more than looking good when they are about the weak in our society, whether they be seniors, the handicapped, parent-less households, or low income individuals.
The Hankyoreh, 15 January 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] Jobs for Seniors that Just Look Nice |
