Members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum need to join hands to prepare workers for rapid advances in information technology, a meeting of senior labor officials was told Thursday.
APEC faces the growing task of helping workers cope with IT development and globalization, said Hideyuki Sakai, director general of the Human Resources Development Bureau at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
"We need to find suitable ways to help workers with those challenges," Sakai said.
APEC's senior labor officials kicked off the two-day talks in Kumamoto to lay the groundwork for its ministerial meeting on human resources development that will take place over the weekend.
The labor ministers will discuss ways to narrow the so-called digital divide between those who have IT knowledge and those who do not.
At the talks, labor officials were to discuss preparing labor markets for IT-based economies, the knowledge and skills required for successful IT workers, and cooperation among the labor, employment and job-training sectors, officials said.
Senior officials were to continue discussions today and compile a draft for the ministerial statement before their ministers arrive in the city this evening.
The ministers are expected to issue a joint statement at the end of their meeting Sunday. It is the fourth APEC meeting of this kind.
In the previous three meetings, held in 1996 in Manila, in 1997 in Seoul and in 1999 in Washington, APEC labor ministers agreed to share labor market information, encourage worker mobility, and build effective social safety nets for workers hit by economic downturns.
APEC was formed in 1989 and groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, China, Chile, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the United States and Vietnam.