Date: Monday, November 30th, 2020

Event time: 10:00 to 12:00 AM

Venue: Women’s Empowerment and Social Association (WESA)

The 14th Roundtable of TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) and Employment was conducted with the cooperation of the Department of Labor and Social Affairs of Herat Province, Help and Organization for Sustainable Support of Afghanistan (OSSA) with a group of participants including national and international organizations, and some government departments in Women’s Empowerment and Social Association (WESA) Conference room, Herat province.

The roundtable was aimed to present views on “Covid-19 impacts on Child Labor during the pandemic in the west zone” and introducing the Technical committees and priorities of the Department of Labor and Social Affairs in Herat province for the next year.

In this roundtable, representatives of some government departments including the Department of Labor and Social Affairs (DoLSA), Afghan Women Chamber of Commerce Industries (AWCCI), and the Chamber of Craftsmen, as well as representatives from various organizations including Help, OSAA, DRC, DACAAR, UNICEF, WISE, IRW, CRDSA, Council of experts, Tolo-e-Dorokhshan employment association and the Women’s Empowerment and Social Association (WESA) were present.

In the beginning, Mr. Abdul Sattar Zarifi, Head of Social Affairs unit of DoLSA in Herat, welcomed the participants and discussed the topic of the 14th roundtable and the importance of discussion as well as the importance of participation of all relevant and active organizations to TVET, Employment and child protection, and also gave statements to the participants about the outputs that should be resulted from such roundtables.

Then, Mr. Zubair Raouf, Head of Labor unit of DoLSA, presented a presentation on hard work, under which he mentioned the titles related to child labor and hard work, and stated what types of work the children should not be involved in and what is considered a violation and what actions are practically and legally prohibited to be done by the children.

The presentation of this issue was a continuation of the previous roundtable on TVET and Employment and the report of DoLSA and the results of child labor research in kilns has been done by Help and also the comprehensive child labor research by the Child Protection Consortium to attract the attention of I/NGOs.

In the following, each participants, as a representative of their Organization/Department, mentioned the activities of their Organizations/Departments during the Covid-19 period, which in some way affected children or projects that were implemented directly in the field of children, and They explained the statistics of the beneficiaries of their programs. In this section, Organizations such as UNICEF, Help, Islamic Relief, CRDSA, DACAAR, DRC, WISE and OSSA mentioned their activities on how and that affected working children and forced child labor in the community.

According to the agenda, in the last part of the roundtable, Mr. Abdul Sattar Zarifi, Head of Social Affairs unit of DoLSA, continued the roundtable by introducing the technical committees of Herat province and presented 12 priority plans of the Department of Labor and Social Affairs in implementing projects next year.

Finally, Mr. Zarifi Concluded the issues discussed during the roundtable and emphasized the presence of organizations and departments involved in dealing with children’s issues, as well as TVET and Employment.

Help has received a project from UNICEF and the headquarters of Help in Bonn, Germany. The mentioned Project Title is: “Reintegration of Highly Vulnerable Children (Including Street Working Children, Internally Displaced Children, Unaccompanied Cross Border Children, and Children applying to join the Police force) for 2,300 People in Herat, Badghis, Ghor and Farah provinces by Providing Vocational Training and Vocational Facilities” which is applicable for 24 months from October 14th, 2019 to October 13th, 2021 

Source: Help IT & Public Relations Department