Bonus

Efforts to find jobs for millions of unemployed are being ignored. The same thing is happening in Turkey.

Millions of qualified unemployed people have become a threat to the country's economy and security. In your near periphery you can find more than one unemployed who has graduated from at least one university.

The government is trying to find solutions to unqualified unemployment with its latest employment bill. We try to tentatively solve the problem of relatively unimportant work like painting public buildings by giving the job to certain companies.

Also, people are going to be educated and undergo vocational training. But it is not clear when this training period will bring new jobs. Let's say a person has received dress making training. Will it be easy to find him or her a job in the near future? Or once given accounting training, how many jobs would be available?

Not only in Turkey but also in the rest of the world the problem is demand. The core of the problem is the decrease in demand. Will a businessman who is aware of the lack of demand be willing to invest in the production of goods and services? If encouragement is necessary to sell goods and services it is important to create an atmosphere of economic and political stability.

If there is no stability it is not enough to say, "Don't keep your money under the pillow, invest." No agreement has been reached with the IMF related to keeping the money under the pillow, but to punish this is no way to find a solution.

If you ask the government, they will say they are taking the necessary legal measures. But these measures are nothing but package bills. Meaning, they charge 35 bills replacing them with one bill, creating so much confusion that nobody understands what's happening. Another issue is the decision to bring down the rate of the Special Consumption Tax (ÖTV). Is it possible to have a decrease of the tax rate for three-months? This will create another confusion in the markets. "Let's get over this period and then we will think about what can be done next year" is the usual attitude.

The car park of a new shopping mall in Istanbul was free of charge. When I went there last week I saw that they decided to charge five liras for an hour.

But if you do shopping for over 25 liras they don't charge you any money. We did some shopping for over 25 liras and got the receipt. When we asked the shopkeeper if they could confirm the amount on the receipt the reply we got was, "You have to ask the information desk."

The person at the information desk told us to apply to the person at the parking lot. The person at the car park sent us to the parking till. The person at the till sent us to the bonus desk where our receipt was scrutinized carefully Then the friend who was with me exploded in exasperation. With your permission, I don't want to mention what was said.

My only regret is that for years I have pressured my students to carefully learn the importance of productivity during the lectures I have given about educating human resources. If I have given some of my students failing marks I want to apologize to them. It seems I have given them bad grades to no avail because it is apparent that even in the private sector paper work is becoming more important than it is in the public sector.

Is it relevant to employ so many people for such an unimportant job? If it will be impossible to pay their wages two or three months later what is going to happen to these young people?

Turkey's number one problem is employment. The only solution is to create sustainability to qualified businesses and be competitively efficient.