Zimbabwe unemployment soars to 94 per cent: UN

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate has spiked to 94 per cent, meaning that fewer than half a million people in the country are formally employed, the UN’s humanitarian arm said yesterday.

‘At close of 2008, only six per cent of the population was formally employed, down from 30 per cent in 2003,’ said a report from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Out of the country’s 12 million people, only 480 000 have formal jobs, down from 3,6 million in 2003, the report said. An estimated three million Zimbabweans have fled the country’s economic and political instability, and are now supporting their families with both cash and food. ‘Importantly, in 2008 remittances from Zimbabweans in neighbouring countries – South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Namibia and Mozambique – were in the form of food and essential household commodities, as well as cash,’ the report said. Adding to Zimbabwe’s woes are consecutive years of drought and a land reform programme launched in 2000, in which some mostly 4 000 white-owned commercial farms were seized and redistributed to blacks. The scheme has punched a gapping hole in agricultural production, which once accounted for 40 per cent of the economy, as most of the new beneficiaries lack both farming equipment and expertise. -Nampa-AFP