Phnom Penh Munici-pal Hall had issued an appeal to community leaders in the city’s nine districts to recruit young, unemployed and unskilled men to attend technical training with the NGO Caritas, an announcement posted on the city hall website yesterday said.

The announcement, signed by governor Kep Chuktema and dated February 6, called on community leaders to conduct the recruitment drive.

“Select the poor youth who are children living in the poor communities in Phnom Penh city,” Kep Chuktema said in the announcement.

“By co-operating with the Caritas Cambodia organisat-ion, these poor youths will get the training and skills they need to find work and improve their family’s living standard.”

Caritas Cambodia executive director Kim Ratana said yesterday the training course would begin early next month at the training centre  in Kandal province’s Takmao town.

“We can accommodate 200 trainees a year and have 14 different skills to teach,” Kim Ratana said, adding that the skills were mechanics, accounting, painting, restaurant management and beauty services.

He said the group had a 90 to 95 per cent employment success rate for those who finished its training courses.

Sam Vanna, 50, an evicted villager from Beoung Kak lake who has been relocated to live in Borey Santepheap II, will be selecting eligible youths from her relocated community to send to Caritas for training.

“It is good that the city hall pays attention to the poor in the community to give them lifelong knowledge and skills,” Sam Vanna said, adding that most young people in her community did not have a job.