YAKUTSK, October 9. /TASS/. Retaining staff requires synchronization of employers' corporate programs and the Arctic Zone development's master plans, Chairperson of Yakutia's State Committee for Employment Svetlana Goryushinskaya said at the 7th Interregional Scientific and Practical Conference - Arctic Vector: Personnel to the Arctic of the Northern Forum on Sustainable Development.
"An integrated approach is needed for the long-term consolidation of specialists - the simultaneous development of the districts' social infrastructures. Therefore, it is especially important to involve big enterprises in implementation of master plans and their synchronization with training and recruitment programs. It is important to create conditions for specialists so that they became permanent residents of the Arctic regions, rather than considered the Arctic a temporary place of work," Yakutia's governmental press service quoted the expert as saying.
Over recent five years, the population of 13 Arctic regions has decreased by 5.6%, and the population under working age has decreased by 8.7%. According to the speaker, "the population of the Arctic is not only decreasing, it is also aging," therefore, an integrated approach is a key area of work for the sustainable development of Yakutia's Arctic regions and for improving the quality of life for their permanent residents.
"It is necessary to start training personnel for enterprises in sought-after professions at secondary school already - through specialized classes, excursions to enterprises of local employers, and it is necessarily to employ school students in summer," the expert stressed. Such an approach, she added, will make it possible to form a stable personnel reserve from Arctic residents.
Human capital
Yakutia's Governor Aisen Nikolaev agreed that the North's development cannot be squeezed to short-term economic effects and a shift model of employment. "The shift model is objectively necessary for a number of big projects, but it should not become a universal solution to all challenges. A territory that only receives labor resources without consolidating people risks becoming just a production site without a regular social and cultural environment," he said at a joint meeting of the Tobolsk and Lena Clubs within the Northern Forum's framework.
The North should be considered not as the country's remote frontier, but as the center of its development, he continued. "In this case only, the implementation of major projects will create a new energy, transport and social framework for the North's sustainable development, and besides - for the development of entire Russia."
He pointed to the importance of developing transport infrastructures and mentioned the construction of the Lena Bridge, the biggest geostrategic project both for the region and for the entire country. According to the governor, big regions of Siberia and the Far East should be integrated into the system of international transport corridors. In this regard, he highlighted the project to create the Mohe - Nayba international transport corridor as an integral part of the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor. "This project is comparable in importance to the construction of the Baikal-Amur mainline. It provides for the creation of a railway from Yakutsk to Magadan with access to the Arctic Ocean through the Nayba deep-sea terminal. Its implementation will radically change transport logistics in the country's North-East," Yakutia's governor added.
