With ASKAR SHEIBANI

CEO, Comtek Network Systems and chair, DBF

The recent announcement by the new government about growth is an empty slogan that we have heard before.

No matter what kind of tax incentive the government would offer to investors, it can never deliver the growth the government is aiming for without people with the skills needed to produce and deliver.

Investment in education and skills has been neglected by all the previous governments. Our schools and colleges have been starved of investment for decades. Rather than educating and upskilling our locally-based young people, the government has taken the cheapest and easiest option of recruiting educated and skilled people from abroad.

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We have over 200,000 disabled people in Wales not in employment but eager to find work. It is grossly unfair that there is very limited determination by the government to upskill this fantastic human resource. Investing in this forgotten potential human capital will not only help the economy, it will also provide them with the means to better themselves financially and have a sustainable career.

We now need to stop coming up with empty political slogans and get on with dealing with the real issues that have caused our economy to deteriorate. We need to invest heavily in our schools and colleges. We must aim to expand the regional workforce by offering meaningful apprenticeship opportunities to all our young people. We must stop, albeit not intentionally, discriminating against the disabled members of our communities. We need to provide them with effective and resourceful support to access training and employment.

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The business community, through Deeside Business Forum, has taken the initiative to campaign and start an initiative to deal with these chronic skills shortages which are crippling our regional economic growth.

We have now got together with the Welsh Government, Flintshire County Council, HFT, DWP, and some other stakeholders, and formed a forum establishing a pilot project to tackle the skills shortages in Flintshire.

We are determined to increase the number of disabled people accessing training and entering employment in Flintshire within 12 months. We will work with all the relevant stakeholders such as Wrexham Glyndwr University, Coleg Cambria and the business community to increase the number of apprentices in Flintshire.

We have organised a conference at Coleg Cambria at 8am on Friday, October 28, inviting everyone interested to support us in tackling the skills shortages. Please join the campaign, register at https://bit.ly/3Vh5yqU to attend the conference and make our region a great place for investment and growth.