PHOENIX – An Arizona electric company created a program to teach people how to become electricians utilizing refugee agencies and the Department of corrections to supply the Valley with electricity.
Emad Afram is one of the trainees in the program learning to become an electrician and a supervisor. He left his home country of Iraq in June of 2012 with his wife through the International Rescue Program. He was 35 years old.
“There is a lot of terrorism there. War. I can’t live there,” Afram said.
Afram was an electrician in Iraq for eight years but when he arrived in Phoenix on March 2015, as a refugee, he almost ended up with a new career. He spent three years in Jordan before arriving in the Valley.
“Housekeeping in a hotel but two days to three later they gave me this job through the agency, the IRC,” Afram said.
That job was an electrician at Austin Electric Services who began the electrician training program looking to bridge the labor gap. Troy Barbush is the programs Director of Training and Development. The program teaches people how to become an electrician through two phases.
“We teamed up with the Home Builders Association. We utilized a lot of the refugee agencies here in the Valley and we also partnered up with the D.O.C.”
There are currently 38 people in the program and eight graduates. Trainees learn in the field earning an hourly wage but once they graduate they get paid by the job. Trainees can also become supervisors, like Afram, teaching other’s how to wire and install electric cables in houses.
The program was originally meant for Millenials but they didn’t seem to interested in the job.
“This is a lot of hard work. This is hard work, good money. The younger generation just doesn’t want to work as hard,” Austin Electric Services Supervisor Joe Abetya said.
That is where workers like Afram, who also have the experience, come and fill those much needed positions. Afram became an electrician after a construction injury, where he lost several fingers on his right hand, while working with his father. He says when he has children of his own he hopes they work in construction as well, following in his footsteps like he followed in his father’s.