POINT OF VIEW/ Mayumi Karako: Afghan aid should support jobs, not job training

It has been seven years since I started a project in the western Afghanistan city of Herat to support children who lost their parents to war. When I went there the first time and saw the tragic state of the orphans, I felt a "responsibility as a witness," which moved me to establish the nongovernmental organization, Lala Association, with the help of many people.

In 2005 we built an orphanage to accommodate 250 children, and donated it to the provincial government. We opened English and computer classes there in expectation that the skills we nurtured would help orphans find better jobs.

Recently, as part of a program to return orphans to homes, we established a handwork center to support poor widows. While the women undergo vocational training, the center pays them a monthly salary. Once they complete the training, it buys their work to help them establish a stable living. The program is designed to encourage them to eventually become independent.

The Japanese government is promoting vocational training for former Taliban members as a major pillar of its civilian aid to Afghanistan.

But from what I have seen and heard through my work, I don't think the program can be effective.

Already, Herat has an impressive occupational training facility built by the Japanese government that has stood idle for years. It was clearly a waste of aid money. That, however, is not the only problem.

Occupational training in any field is useless if it does not lead to employment. In Afghanistan, which has no industry to speak of, and which relies almost entirely on imports for daily goods, there are practically no jobs for people who complete training.

Afghanistan is a farming country where abundant agricultural produce is piled up in bazaars. It is also said that the country is rich in mineral resources. However, since it has no technologies or facilities to process them into products, the profits go to neighboring countries.

Take grapes, for example. Many varieties of sweet and tasty grapes grow in Afghanistan. They are processed into raisins in countries such as Iran and Pakistan and sold across the world bearing the names of those countries as the place of origin.

This is because Afghanistan has no factories to wash grapes, remove stems and dry them.

The same thing can be said of wool. Buyers of nearby countries beat down the price of wool taken from sheep and goats raised by Afghan farmers, process it into expensive yarn and weave it to make carpets and traditional rugs known as kilims that sell at high prices.

What Afghanistan needs now are workplaces that employ as many people as possible even if the work is simple labor that requires no skill. Private businesses are reluctant to risk investing in countries where the political situation is unstable. That is where the government can step in.

China is already moving. It built a factory in Herat to make yarn from wool and is boosting local industries to create hundreds of jobs. It has also started developing mines.

Instead of providing vocational training, the Japanese government should concentrate on building factories and aim to revive local industries and create jobs. I hope the $5 billion aid package financed with Japanese taxpayers' money will be put to good use and not wasted this time.

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The author heads a nongovernmental organization for Afghan aid.