Folk Development Colleges (FDCs)
The Source of Skilled Construction Industry Workforce Dynamic Demands
Abstract
Folk Development Colleges (FDCs) are community- based education system established in 1975 to stress the commitments to youth and thus national development. The youth's state, position, and prospects are paramount and fundamental for the nation development to lower-middle-income and developing country like Tanzania that should not be neglected as a group that symbolize and represent a remarkable potential cluster within our societies and acts as a latent human capital resource to various production areas including the construction industry. Notwithstanding their significant importance, the effects of technological development and global business competition have left much youth even in Tanzania suffering from high unemployment records which marks the severe and challenging thought in getting a well-founded and stable foothold into the labor market. Despite unemployment states the construction industry in Tanzania is still under pressure to find the potential knowledgeable, skilled and experienced youths to undertake charges to fill the gap of skilled workforce shortages in the industry. Towards this end, this study aims to examine whether the FDES have a significant effect in producing the skilled workforce to meet the dynamic demands of the construction industry job market and hence reducing the construction workforce shortages. One hundred and three (103) respondents were purposely sampled with both qualitative and quantitative methods involved through questionnaires, in-depth face-to-face and telephone interview for data collection. Using factor analysis, seventeen effects of FDES to meet the construction industry job market demand were identified through a comprehensive literature review; then, RII (relative importance index) were used to identify the perception gaps among stakeholders and obtaining eleven potential effects upon analyzing online survey data. The findings show that FDES have a substantive contribution in imparting knowledge, skills and competence to help in reducing the construction workforce shortages within the Tanzania Construction Industry. Moreover, the results have documented an increased number of enrollment and programs that can help to promote self-employment, enhance reduction of skilled labor shortages in the construction industry and cater the dynamic demands of the construction industry job market.
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