By Yusiff Moiguah
With thousands of unemployed youth roaming our communities with anticipations that the new Sierra Leone People’s Party SLPP president Julius Maada Bio led administration would have by now changed or diversify job creation and fix the whole unemployment problem in the country, by expanding on innovations through the openings of factories and industries to ease the unemployment burden. According the United Nations Development Programme 70% of the youth populations in Sierra Leone are unemployed, while over 800,000 are searching for jobs according to Sierra Leone unemployment data 2014. There were hopes for better change with multiple jobs and employments for young graduates to earn a sustainable livelihood but this appears to be the exact opposite of what each and every Sierra Leonean is faced with, now what they expect from the new leader, for which ruling party youth had recently called on President Bio to settle their unemployment problems. …that it’s really not easy for young people since the new administration assumed office and that they want jobs.
This comment came in at celebration time of president Bios first year in office, amidst grumbling at the SLPP national headquarters, where they bluntly asked the president that they want jobs as most of them now feel left out in the cold. Apart from all efforts to create jobs it is no secret that no government can solve the unemployment problems alone in Sierra Leone without private sector players which is why former president Koroma exhaustively engaged private sector executives that helped doled a lot of cooperate entity employments for youth.
Now, as it is, one would say then here are car the wash sites job options. Again, will it fix it, is the million dollars concerns most youth serving agencies are posing to the government and development partners in relation to handling youth unemployment. In that direction, Minister of Youth Affairs Mohamed O. Bangura recently announced government’s plans to refurbish car wash centers in Freetown and other major cities, through the national youth service scheme with support from development partners as part of moves to develop the human capital of Sierra Leone out of unskilled labour. Bangura promised that twenty-five car wash sites will either be renovated or established new ones to create jobs for deserving youth.
From 14 to 35 years of age mostly described as a youthful period in Sierra Leone, and these are sets of people that go without job nor a sustainable livelihood, if at all they do except for those with small capital who have resolved to commercial motor bike riding, sell mobile phone recharge credits of various networks to earn themselves whatever little they could for a living. And those who do not have what it takes to engage in such businesses especially vulnerable girls women do otherwise to earn money. So, don’t wonder why there are still so many night carpenters and slay queens on duty round the clock, not to mentions the easy means source of income through the snatchings of cell phones and bags from ladies. Trades most of them will hardly retire from.
Prior to the refurbishments of these quick fixes jointly funded car wash job schemes, there has always been car wash centers around town and other places in the country that have been run by some serious young people. But here is a new thing, a completely different observable facts in Sierra Leone under the news dispensation, as ruling party supporters for the first time and publically asked president Bio to offer them their share of jobs like he had doled out to his Chinese number siblings, relatives, friends and family members at home and abroad most as diplomats.
Mr President, Her Excellency Madam Fatima Bio we thank you for the good work you are doing for the country. But the issue is that it’s not easy just like Emerson says the ‘grund’ dry and it is dry for us because we have been abandoned by the party, and whenever we visit party members they always give us excuses of ban on all government recruitments. So we want jobs we want jobs Mr President; angry SLPP youth call on president Bio to settle their unemployment plights, as its being reported in a video making rounds in the new media. For the irate ruling party youth, the promises of their leader, president Bio and most of his cabinet ministers are yet to be marched with actions, and their calls and concerns have so far received wide condemnations on the social media and in public domain, with shocks and surprise of what president Bio seems to have turned out to be in terms of living up to the expectations of the people to honour promises he made. It could be vividly recalled that president Bio during his ten years or more campaigns for the presidency, traversing the country asking for the people’s mandate, made so many promises that still remain unfilled and the least considered is the failing free education, a flagship project crippling to meet the urgent needs of the development of the so called human capital, not to talk of targeted beneficiaries – pupils and their teachers.
Expectations, like his predecessor president Koroma always says there were so many expectations out there looking forward to him to deliver on his promises which he did extremely well in than waiting for reminders and requests from the All People’s Congress (APC) National Youth League to ask him for jobs or what to do in that direction of employment creations. The Koroma administration brought in thousand of youth job offers through the youth fishing project for well over one thousand young people, among other remarkable youth employment drives, that are earning gainful employments for so many people today.
Prospects were also that the new administration president Bio’s pro-poor policies agenda was actually going to reduce the much presence of ‘slay queens’ from their usual spots, provide jobs and transform the lives of youth, but their plight remains the same after one year in office. The same old tricks, nothing has changed and will change even amidst the much publicized anti-rape advocacies ‘hands off our girls’ campaigns.
Moreover the unemployment situation of Sierra Leonean youth is the same everywhere in the country as graduates and middle level man power skilled trained youth are all jobless with their talents in the new era of fighting graft, regional and tribal discriminations, political intimidations of opposition party members and their supporters as well as indiscriminate dismissals of northerners from civil and public services because of their memberships to the opposition APC, all in furtherance to rendering the country’s hard earned peace fragile. This is not development at all, but primitive and savage hate backed retrogression and imposed poverty where in human resources and institutions are rendered none dysfunctional due to divide and rule patterns of governance.
Back to one of our government’s quick fix approaches towards solving youth unemployment problem, is somehow a laudable move to have continually being undertaking by past and incumbent administrations have to reached this far, but the new wash car jobs idea looks very much derogatory to most skilled young people, who think though the car wash jobs scheme will to certain extent address part of the problem but wont fully employ young people to be self reliant as they are no longer new in the markets and had failed the youth once during the former National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) junta regime, from the early to mid 90s, when youth were merely reduced to the unskilled labour of car washing as if that was the only means of creating jobs for young people.
The car wash idea had been jointly tried and tested severely by state authorities and development partners but it didn’t succeed in many Africa countries including those of the then NPRC junta, and one of the reasons this will also fail because the scheme is selective targeting pro-ruling party youth like the failing free education which has failed right from it starting. In fact, the scheme is leap to fail mournfully like the sinking free education, because if children of government ministers don’t attend public school then what good do you expect from them as far as creating favorable learning environments and the provision of teaching and learning materials for effective schoolings. Similarly, cabinet ministers and members of parliament won’t offer nor encourage their relatives to take up car wash jobs from any of these newly refurbished car wash sites around town.
On that note, the actual jobs calls by irate SLPP youth is a quest for sustainable livelihood support aimed at eradicating youth poverty to a better standard of living through well paid jobs like those that have been offered to the relatives of government official including the president and his party members who are now receiving huge chunks of moneys from the national consolidate revenue at the detriment of financially vulnerable tax payers. So we keep asking how sustainable, genuine are the car wash sites jobs in solving the massive youth unemployment situation Sierra Leone is faced with. Instead, president Bio should bring in very sustainable long term solutions towards addressing the joblessness of young people if his government really means well for the youth and for development of human capital of young Sierra Leoneans.
That is, establish and open industries that manufacture goods and services from some of the country’s raw materials that are being illegally exported from the country by foreigners, such as timber diamond, gold to name the few, leaving the very timber ground boys, diamond and gold diggers unskilled with abject poverty. So until Sierra Leone makes provision for knowledge transfer and value addition a priorities we are still far from coming out of the woods in as much as finding solutions to youth unemployment. Therefore the car wash sites employments for youth needs a strategic review into a very sustainable approach towards salvaging the sad plight of our vulnerable young generation of the land that we love.