Key Questions on Youth

I WOULD like to air my view regarding the Deputy Minister of Youth.You spent years as Secretary for Youth in Namibia.

Now as Deputy Minister; how are you going to address unemployment among youth in the country? I ask you this question, because sometimes I get dismayed by your statements. Instead of addressing the burning issue, which is unemployment, you tend to blame youth for misbehaving.This is not enough and please don’t give excuses that you are new in the office.Unemployment among youth is a time bomb that needs your urgent attention and there are ways you can address it.Firstly, vocational training centres are producing large numbers of skilled trainees.Where are these students now? The Namibian Student Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAS) continues funding students at VTCs, but once they finished, there is no capital to start their businesses and no commercial banks are willing to help.They thus end up working for low salaries.My advice to youth is to look beyond sex and concentrate on the public-private partnership programmes which would enable skilled youth to join the mainstream of economic development, because there are many untapped opportunities for our youth to be the driving force of employment.It simply means that through pilot projects, they will be able to employ others Anon Via e-mailInstead of addressing the burning issue, which is unemployment, you tend to blame youth for misbehaving.This is not enough and please don’t give excuses that you are new in the office.Unemployment among youth is a time bomb that needs your urgent attention and there are ways you can address it.Firstly, vocational training centres are producing large numbers of skilled trainees.Where are these students now? The Namibian Student Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAS) continues funding students at VTCs, but once they finished, there is no capital to start their businesses and no commercial banks are willing to help.They thus end up working for low salaries.My advice to youth is to look beyond sex and concentrate on the public-private partnership programmes which would enable skilled youth to join the mainstream of economic development, because there are many untapped opportunities for our youth to be the driving force of employment.It simply means that through pilot projects, they will be able to employ others Anon Via e-mail