By Ernest Chanda
Tue 05 June 2012, 13:25 CAT
PROFESSOR Oliver Saasa says the government should not concentrate so much on creating formal jobs, but consider the informal sector as well.
Commenting on President Michael Sata's statement that he does not believe in creating casual jobs, Prof Saasa, who is an economic consultant, said every job counted in an economy. He said looking at the current situation where the informal sector had more labour force, it was prudent that the government still counted them as jobs.
"For me jobs are important no matter how you classify them. If they are there, it would be better to give them to those who deserve them because at the end of the day they will provide an income to the people. We should not only talk about creating employment in the formal sector where you wear a tie, if you are in the civil service you go to sit in an office and expect government to pay you a salary at the end of the month," Prof Saasa said.
"At the moment the major employer in the formal sector is government. So for me I will not look at certain jobs as casual, I will call them informal sector. The biggest overall employer at the moment accounting for 75 per cent of the labour force is the informal sector. You walk through Katimamulilo Road where they are constructing; those artisans are part of the labour force. So when you hear the President talking about… we need permanent… I would like us to define and redefine permanent."
Prof Saasa said the government should formulate a new employment policy that would also give incentives to employers.
He said that would help define the direction government was taking on employment creation.
"We need this as a matter of urgency. An employment policy is a policy that not only targets in a more focused way by government… the sector, one of which is agriculture, but it also has to be a policy that extends incentives to those that are going to employ labour in that category," he said.
"It must be a policy also that extends incentives, whether it's financial sector support, whether it's training; it's a policy that must give clarity of what government wants to focus their attention on. At the moment everyone is talking about more money in the pockets, but we know that some people don't even have pockets. But we need to move beyond just talking about more money in your pockets. We need to move towards the how aspect; how are we going to do it?"
He said technocrats should move in and interpret the President's statement correctly.
"So when the President makes that statement it now has to be broadened. But it's now the technocrats that must sit and say the President has spoken, but how do we do it? I expect that the technocrats are not only going to look at the formal sector to mean permanent jobs, but go beyond formal sector employment," said Prof Saasa.
"So far I'm not hearing from the Ministry of Labour, I'm not hearing from the Ministry of Agriculture. So far I'm not hearing from the Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry what strategies they have put in place; that for me is the music I want to dance to."
During the official opening of the Levy Mwanawasa Stadium in Ndola on Saturday, President Sata called for patience and said the government wanted to create permanent jobs for its people.
Last year, former finance minister Dr Situmbeko Musokotwane said six million people were statistically eligible to formal jobs.
[And 40,000 people work in mining. Which means that mining is not a major provider of jobs, even in the best of times. - MrK]
The PF government has admitted that employment levels remain high and that there is need to find solutions to the problem.
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