Maravi

Unemployment kills

COMMENT - Collect the wealth of the people, it's copper, and money problems will go away. At least $1.5 billion a year, invested in infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and social capital (education, healthcare) is going to turn the country around. Also, the large liquidity gap (low savings rates, high lending rates) are stifling local entrepreneurs.

Unemployment kills
By The Post
Thu 31 May 2012, 13:25 CAT

THEY died not attempting to steal. They died not seeking handouts. They died seeking jobs - the only source of real dignity. For the families of those 11 Mpulungu job seekers who died on Monday, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. We feel the loss, and we are thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were decent human beings seeking the only decent way to earn a living - work, a job, some piecework.

Your loved ones had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'give me a job and I will feed myself and my family; give me work and I will meet it with joy.' They had a hunger to work and earn a living.

And we want to say something to the people of Zambia who are following this very sad event. We know it is hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen.

We have to learn the correct lessons from all this. This is a very hard experience. But we all have to be strong and focused on what this means and on what needs to be done.

The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to those who are strong, who are focused and who have a vision. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. We shouldn't give up.

We can do better and we will do better. We know it's tough sometimes. We understand the desperation of our people. We know what it means to be without a job, to be without income, to be without a source of livelihood. We know what it means to be unable to provide for one's family.

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 despair in this nation. We need to quickly take away our people's despair and give them hope, give them jobs, give them a source of income - give them life and the dignity that goes with one being able to provide for his family. Let's give these unemployed citizens a future, a reason to live.

Why should we have so many people unemployed in this country? Why should we have such a small number of people in formal employment?

How can we explain this reckless abandonment of people? KK and his comrades did not struggle and work to see some of our people dying in search of some piecework. They fought for people to have the right to work and not to have whole communities and people abandoned. This is not what they lived for and struggled for.

[This is the result of 20 years of austerity and bending over backwars to foreign mine owners, including in refusing to collect the belongings of the Zambian people, which are the people's copper and other natural resources. Under international law, they belong to the people colletively, and cannot be given away by anyone, including the President, Finance Minister, Mines Minister, or taken by foreign mining houses without full compensation.

That is why the people are poor, and yet the mines export at least $5 billion a year, $3 billion of which are pure profits. - MrK]

Unless we do something meaningful about jobs, we will not be able to repair this country. We need to bring a change to the way we deal with the crisis of unemployment. They died for jobs. Let's make sure that their children have jobs; let's make sure that their neighbours have jobs.

Losing 11 lives over jobs is not a small thing; it is a great disaster. But a great disaster is a symbol to us to remember all the big things of life and forget the small ones, of which we have thought too much.

It doesn't make sense to try and fix blame for the death of those 11 decent citizens on any political authority. Doing so is being narrow-minded and seeking cheap political capital over such big a national disaster. We cannot encourage narrow-mindedness, for no nation can be great, can overcome its problems whose people are narrow in thought or in action.

We have work ahead. There should be no resting for any of us till we make all the people of Zambia what destiny intended them to be. The future beckons to us to bring jobs and opportunities to the common man; to fight and end poverty and all its offshoots; to build a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation.

We must hold together, and all our petty troubles and difficulties and conflicts must be ended because no single person will create all the necessary jobs that our people today urgently need. Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who are not focused, by those who don't act intelligently.

We must all know this. It must always sustain us, because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes and you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

A week before this Mpulungu disaster, on Tuesday, May 22, 2012, we carried an editorial comment under the heading "Jobs, jobs, jobs!" in which we stated that "there is need to always bear in mind that the Zambian people were not voting for ideas, for things in one's head in the last elections.

They were voting for jobs, to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.

Therefore, there is need for the PF government to put jobs and services first before other considerations. They have to use all their creativity to find ways that would best create jobs and protect those who they were elected to defend. You can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services.

The people will not, cannot, abide by political posturing". This, in part, was what we stated in our comment last Tuesday, adding: "Good political leaders must be interested in the welfare of those in distress. We expect them to feel the distress of many who suffer from the tragedy of unemployment.

Unemployment is a difficult problem for any government to face but to solve it, it needs hardworking and public-spirited political leaders, it needs people of courage who will defend the truth and demand justice for the unemployed.

That so many of our people are denied the opportunity to work is a shameful injustice, especially since it is often the result of economic policies which fail to take adequate account of the inherent value and dignity of the human person." And we concluded: "Truly, 'our people need jobs' and the purpose of our economy should be to employ people.

Everything should be about jobs, jobs, jobs!" This was a week ago; a week before the Mpulungu disaster. It is important to seriously reflect and meditate deeply over these issues and the loss of lives that accompany them.

Unemployment kills - not only through stampedes like the one which robbed us 11 lives in Mpulungu. Unemployment kills in so many ways. It is responsible for our high infant mortality, malnutrition, our short lifespan. It is also the reason why many of our people are today dying from preventable diseases.

Unemployment kills. Let's create more and more jobs to save the lives of more and more of our people.

Labels: POVERTY, UNEMPLOYMENT

posted by MrK @ 2:17 PM