Jobs don’t meet employment needs

THE less than 9000 estimated new job opportunities that Namibia generates annually do not meet the demand for employment. The country’s youth are the biggest victims of this situation.

This was the damning message of the Minister of Youth, National Service, Sport and Culture, Pohamba Shifeta, in Swakopmund last week.He said: ‘There is a mismatch between young people coming out of [the] education [system] and the capacity as a country to create jobs. That is why young people even from universities are without jobs.’According to him, the onus now rests on young people to create jobs for themselves.He made the remarks at the launch of the fourth Erongo Regional Youth Enterprise Expo.Shifeta said that despite Africa being the richest continent in terms of minerals, it remains the poorest. This, he said, is a result of the fact that most minerals are sent overseas as raw materials or only in semi-processed form, resulting in these foreign countries cashing in big time. ‘We need young people to turn what we have into work.’The Minister emphasised that a country’s citizens ‘don’t have sovereignty if you don’t have economic power and only political power’.As the patron of this year’s event, Erongo Regional Governor, Samuel Nuuyoma, said the expo ‘could reap great benefits for the economy of our country as the youth are the target group for successful businesses for the future.’They say charity begins at home and what better way to start than to encourage and motivate young people to join veteran business people of this country in their quest for economic development.’However, the chairperson of the local organising committee, Ernst Weather, said he doubted the ‘loyalty of some of the mining companies in the region’ that do not support the regional government’s efforts enough. ‘We need the private sector to meet the Government’s efforts half-way.’