The president of Papua New Guinea's Divine Word University says the government is partly to blame for high levels of unemployment among graduates.
Father Jan Czuba, who raised the issue at a recent at a National Youth Commission symposium, says there are several key causes of the dearth of jobs for local youth.
Father Czuba says this includes the agreements signed by the PNG government with developers which allow foreign companies to bring in thousands of foreign staff to do work that could be done by Papua New Guineans.
"When they allowed a lot of foreign workers, employees, to come instead of training Papua New Guineans, or employing Papua New Guineans. The other is there is no clear government direction in terms of economic and social development and their proper assessment of their needs in the labour market. The Higher Education sector provides training but does not talk to the labour market, so there is a mismatch of skills."
