Western Australia releases migration plan

Australia, 13th December: The State Migration Plan has been released by the Western Australia government.

The plan includes the occupations in high demand in the state for which the state government will provide sponsorships for potential immigrants wanting to move to live and work here.

The occupations in the list of the WA(Western Australia) State Migration Plan are not related to any particular job vacancy and do not provide any guarantee of employment in any of the listed occupations. These occupations help in identifying the skills in high demand in various industries of WA.

For this, a formal agreement was signed between the Federal government and the WA government for identifying, targeting and offering sponsorships for skilled migrants needed by the state in the coming four years.

The total annual quota for sponsoring applicants to come to WA has been fixed at 6,000.

Skilled migrants getting sponsorships to live and work in WA will be provided with opportunities to get employed on the vacant job positions for which no suitable local worker is found, stated Peter Collier, Training and Workforce Development Minister.

The state of WA is expected to face a shortage of up to 150,000 workers by the year 2017 and the agreement includes several medium and long term plans for dealing with such shortage of skilled workers.

According to Mr. Collier, despite the growth in the population of WA, there will remain a wide gap in the demand for the skilled workers and the available supply of the workforce.

The period of next seven years will see creation of 240,000 new jobs in WA due to the upcoming projects of Oakajee, Gorgon and Ord River.

Around 4.5 percent growth has been forecast in the professional and technical services, wholesale trade, insurance and finance and health sectors in the coming four years time, asserted Mr. Collier.

And the aim of the State Migration Plan of WA is to increase the participation of the workforce (especially the disengaged and Aboriginals), invite and retain workforce with appropriate skills, supplementing domestic workforce with skilled migrant workers, providing flexible and innovative training and a co-ordinated response of the state government to the issues of workforce development.