Maravi

Unemployment and this year’s elections

Unemployment and this year’s elections
By The Post
Thu 28 July 2011, 14:00 CAT

Employment, job creation should be one of the key campaign issues in this year’s elections.

And political leaders would make a positive contribution to free and fair elections if they addressed themselves to the real issues, to their manifestos, so that voters could judge what ideas the political parties and their leaders had on problems that really matter: unemployment, corruption, cost of living, poor services in education, health, government offices and so on and so forth.

Free, fair and constructive elections would become a reality if politicians took their responsibility seriously. In this regard, the approach taken by Bradford Machila, the livestock and fisheries minister and the MMD’s parliamentary candidate for Kafue Constituency, is commendable. Bradford has shown a rare level of honesty in his admission that the MMD government has failed to address the high levels of unemployment in the country and that creating employment for Zambians was still a challenge to the government. And now it’s time for the voters to challenge Bradford and his party to show how they are going to deal with the issue of unemployment.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in article 23 states that “everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” The right to work – and freedom from unemployment – imposes an obligation on the state to design a policy that promotes “full, productive and freely chosen employment”. Hence, such a policy should have the objective of ensuring that there is work for all who are available for and seeking work; such work is as productive as possible; there is freedom of choice of employment; there is fullest possible opportunity for each work to qualify for the job for which one is well suited, irrespective of political opinion, religion, colour and sex. There is also fullest possible opportunity for each worker to use one’s skills and talents in such a job.

The right to work is increasingly important as our government continues to withdraw from the provision of basic services, leaving these to market forces and non-governmental actors.


And the right to work should be construed against the conceptual background of the meaning of work. Other than being a means to livelihood, work expresses and enhances a person’s dignity. Unemployment undermines a person’s human dignity. It is a terrible frustration and humiliation for a parent to be unable, due to unemployment, to provide for the family. It is equally demoralising for young people to find there is no work waiting for them when they leave school, college or university.

There is more to the question of unemployment than just its economic and social costs, severe as they are in our country at present. Even if unemployment did not impact negatively on the economy, and even if it was not a cause of many of our social problems, it would still be a denial of an essential element of human dignity.

Through work, we cooperate with the creator in bringing to fulfillment the created world; we exercise our God-given abilities and talents as co-workers with God in the great task of transforming the material world. Work is not simply an honorous necessity, coincidental with our physical existence, a burden which we should try to escape. It is a vital part of our humanity, the manifestation of our creativity, an opportunity for our growth and fulfillment. Indeed, work is nothing less than a constituent dimension of the purpose for which the world was created and for which we ourselves were brought into being.

That so many of our people are denied the opportunity to work is a shameful injustice, especially since it is to a large extent the result of excessive pursuit of economic policies which fail to take adequate account of the inherent value and dignity of the human person. Work is indeed a right, a right which, as a nation, we fail to respect at our peril.

These are the issues that should dominate our election campaigns for this year. Unemployment, as Bradford has correctly observed, is indeed a big challenge for us. And only those who have a good answer or response to this challenge deserve our votes. This should be an election for jobs, for better living conditions. This should be an election about service to the millions of our people who suffer. It should be an election about ending poverty, ignorance and disease. This should be an election about putting as many of our people who are today unemployed into jobs as possible.

That may be beyond us, but as long as there are many unemployed people in our country, the more important should this issue of unemployment be on our election agenda. And so we have to labour and work hard to give our people jobs. This is no time for pettiness and mudslinging, no time for ill-will. This is no time for small thinking because job creation cannot be achieved if we encourage narrow mindedness, for no nation whose leaders and people are narrow in thought or in action can achieve high employment levels. There is hard work ahead. There should be no resting for any of us until we put as many of our people as possible in meaningful jobs, till we make all the people of Zambia what destiny intended them to be.

We have a very serious problem of unemployment and no one should be allowed to play politics with people’s jobs. And the voice of the people without jobs; the voice of the people with real needs, is louder than all the boos that can be assembled. The people will not, cannot, abide by posturing.

Jobs mean a lot and let’s put the jobs of our people before other considerations. Let’s vote for those with ways to increase employment. We must work unceasingly to lift this nation to a higher destiny, to a new plateau of compassion. We should always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in one’s head. They are fighting to have jobs and win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children. This is why the issue of employment or unemployment is very important and should be placed very high as an election campaign issue.

Labels: JOBS, UNEMPLOYMENT

posted by MrK @ 2:26 PM