Windhoek
Despite the existence of a national employment policy, unemployment continues to subject vast numbers of Namibian youth to abject poverty, with many young people sitting idly at home jobless despite holding tertiary qualifications.
The National Youth Council’s re-elected executive chairperson, Mandela Kapere, during an interview with New Era yesterday said the fact that institutions are not fully capacitated and optimised to deliver efficient and quality services is partly to blame for the situation of the youth.
Delegates who attended the National Youth Council’s (NYC) General Assembly in Katima Mulilo last month agreed that there is an urgent need for the development of a national youth strategy, as well as to review and revamp the national youth policy in order to accelerate youth development programmes.
“The General Assembly resolved that there is need for a complete revamp and review of the youth development strategies and institutions. The biggest emphasis was on the need to review the national youth policy and the development of a youth strategy,” said Kapere regarding the outcome of last month’s indaba.
He said the process would start with the review of existing youth programmes: “Delegates also partly touched on known issues, such as unemployment and the quality of education in the country, but we did not delve much into it because these things are known to all of us already.”
With the unemployment statistics amongst the youth having risen well above the 40 percent mark, youth organisations are now more inclined than ever to take the issue of youth upliftment into their own hands, instead of waiting on the government.
Kapere pointed out that the NYC has gone through a process of transformation of its national leadership: “The challenge is to take these transformational processes to the regions. This is a key component, because it will help us to optimise institutions at a regional and constituency level,” he said.
He also dispelled notions that youth leaders in the country are more interested in political positions than to fight for the improvement of young people. The NYC has over the years been described as a stepping-stone and breeding ground for emerging politicians.
The ruling party’s youth wing in particular has left many with no choice but to believe that the NYC is a breeding ground as factions of the party continue to fight for dominance in the organisation.
“People who still say such things are stuck in the past. When you look at the quality of our discussions at the General Assembly you will see that a lot of the young leaders have moved on and are not interested in that kind of politics. We are interested in making youth organisations efficient so that they can deliver optimally,” Kapere concluded.
The Namibia Statistics Agency’s most recent report on employment patterns based on the labour survey conducted in 2013 found that “jobs are there, but people are not qualified” The state of the global economy was cited as a contributory factor to the rise in mass youth unemployment.