Unemployment a national headache One of the major gains since our independence is the number of universities we have now and these churn out thousands of graduates who are finding it difficult to get employment
One of the major gains since our independence is the number of universities we have now and these churn out thousands of graduates who are finding it difficult to get employment

One of the major gains since our independence is the number of universities we have now and these churn out thousands of graduates who are finding it difficult to get employment

Nick Mangwana View From The Diaspora
The Government is doing a lot right. This is might seem a surprise to many, but when one looks at the challenges that were brought by El Nino and notice that there is no one really starving then credit should be given where it belongs. Electricity and water supply have dramatically improved in the

last few months. But all this will mean little if there is no improvement to the employment situation in the country. The nation is just not creating enough jobs.

Our urban population continues to rise and become restive. There is a great deal of pressure on the Government not only to deliver on electoral manifesto promises but cut down expenditure, but yet create employment. The only jobs Government can create are civil service jobs. But it should continue to play a facilitative role by crafting investor friendly policies which encourage corporations to feel secure and commit to employing people because the future is not only predictable but looks prospective.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines an unemployed person as “a person not working, who is currently available for work and is actively seeking work”. So whether that person is currently selling trinkets out of desperation and making a living out of it and yet they are looking for that job that is in line with their degree, they are unemployed. There is nothing controversial about this. It is about the aspirations of our young people. This nation must meet them or otherwise we lose a generation of graduates whose degrees are being rendered redundant.

The argument here is not that all informal employment is unemployment. But if one is not using the skills they spent a total of 15 years in school for, because the opportunities are not there, they can surely be defined as unemployed. These young people remain very vulnerable to socio-economic changes and are political fodder for political malcontents.

Zimbabwe is a country that has made great strides in gender parity, but with so much high unemployment among the young people the most vulnerable group are the young females who end up selling their dignity for a paltry reward. The labour market is historically gender segregational and naturally the current state of the labour market sets traps for our young ladies who are being taken advantage of by uncouth older men. One cannot blame these young ladies who feel they have to do what they have to do. What should concern the authorities is what this is doing to the social fabric long term. This could be another lost generation, the result of which might have a pricey consequence for the future of this nation.

There has been a constant service improvement across the board in Zimbabwe. One sees this when they leave the country and come back. Every time one comes back into the country they face an improved service delivery. But on the other hand they also face an increasingly disenchanted and fretful young urban populace. It will be disingenuous to come up with hair-splitting definitions of unemployment just to justify this unacceptably high unemployment rate. One realises the gravity of the situation whenever one visits families. It is not an exaggeration that one of the major gains since our independence is the number of universities we have now. These churn out graduates at a very high rate therefore very few families can claim to having no graduate.

The downside is also that very few families cannot moan of having a graduate on whose shoulders they had pinned all their hopes and the aspirations of the whole clan in some cases. For them to see that graduate being a Kombi tout is not only heart-rending, it demoralises them from sacrificing for their next child.

University used to mean a bright future. Now it only means a social media expert, for this is what they spend their time doing. Their intellect remains only sharp in that they engage in and win in cyber debates and arguments. But what they do not and cannot deliver is national productivity and family progress. This regression should not be allowed to continue. Therefore, as our ministers’ grandstand and engage in ego-stroking video clips threatening to close the few companies that actually employ our people, they should think again. The nation is relieved that not only clarity, but common sense has prevailed.

There is a political preponderance in not viewing national progress through the scopes of our own families because of our connections. Not everyone is equally privileged and some people have to distribute hundreds of curriculum vitae and receive no responses while some are just told to come to report to work tomorrow without writing a single application. But for those who are not this fortunate, the more of these résumés one churns out, the more the frustration with the Government, for somebody has to shoulder the blame.

The Government needs to come up a with a cogent policy for creating and developing employment in the private sector and not short term political gimmickry.

The targets are already in place from the party of Government’s manifesto. Employment has been created, but more has been lost through the rationalisation of the labour laws that took place last year.

There are youth projects being worked on. While these are welcome, wantonly giving these loans in the current macro-economic climate will pose a repayment challenge to the young people. While these loans are being used for projects like car washes, small scale mining and the like, focus on stability is focus on structured employment. This is not to say that youth entrepreneurship should not be promoted but the approach should be integrated with a focus on employment for those with no entrepreneurial talent.

Tenders should only be awarded to those bidders who are big on youth employment and have a good track record on that. Should it be a foreign company, only skills not locally available should be imported. This sounds obvious enough, but when one visits construction sites, hordes of foreign nationals are seen performing mundane tasks which Zimbabwe have in abundance.

Our young people are exposed to economic uncertainty. This country cannot afford to have a generation without hope. A generation accustomed to poverty. A whole generation acquainted to suffering. This is the type of thing that make bored and idle young people sink into drugs and alcohol, which clearly is already a social concern. This has profound social costs Zimbabwe can ill-afford.

The political urgency of this matter is not about the ruling party having delivered on its promises by 2018. It is about the derailment of social cohesion and the de-skilling of the young people after such an investment in their education and skilling up. Young people do not realise their potential by selling trinkets.

Government efforts such as having a Psychomotor Skills Ministry to bridge the gap between educational and employment needs should be complimented. The problem is that the ministry has turned into a joke because nobody knows what it has done since its inception. No clear policy has come out of it. If something has been delivered only them and God knows what it is. While the intention was noble, one would like to know what this ministry has done to prove its own relevance, let alone to get the approval of the young people.

The Government has always supported apprenticeship schemes for young people. However, a lot of them have ended up on the streets after their training or seeking employment in neighbouring countries because local industry has no capacity to absorb them. As discussed earlier, tenders should only be awarded to those companies that take our young people on apprenticeship and those that absorb them after training. There should be a direct procurement policy which drives the need to support those companies that give opportunities to our youths. There should be enough audits which rate and categorises such firms. In some cases, there should be taxation subsidies to those companies that employ a certain number of young people from the age of 22-35 (as an example). This can only work if the Government values the employment of the young people as much as it values revenue collection.

The biggest barrier to the employability of our graduates is lack of work experience. There have been efforts to deal with this through industrial attachment programmes. This, the Government has done well. What is intriguing is the unexplained gap between the world of education and the world of work. There is just no smooth transition from the education and work sectors therefore justifying the Psychomotor Ministry issue, whose current effectiveness is being questioned here.

One hopes that an environment conducive to nurturing youth entrepreneurship and peer opportunity creation will create the necessary mindset that does not just follow what everyone else is doing because survival is at stake. That there is enough incentives and entrepreneurial support for innovative start ups and there is no financial punishment for failures when someone’s trying something that has not been tried before.

Education is not only about learning skills. It should be an audition for a job after which the job should be made available. When opportunities are not made available to the young people after they have done a good audition, they will lose their moral compass and sense of decency.

Without these the future becomes scary, not only for these young people but for the preceding and the succeeding generations.

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