Maravi

Employment creation is a collective responsibility

Employment creation is a collective responsibility
By The Post
Tue 05 June 2012, 13:25 CAT

MICHAEL Sata's appeal for patience over jobs is understandable. But our people have been waiting for jobs for a very long time and it will be very difficult for them to keep on waiting without knowing exactly what the government is doing to create more jobs for them.There is need for the government to continually explain what it is doing on this front. People want to know what the government is doing, where the government is headed.

What people are fighting for, what people are yearning for is not ideas in one's head but concrete actions that will move their lives forward, that will put more money in their pockets and improve their living conditions.

For a man who has no job, any job will do; the choice between good and permanent jobs will come later. Casual jobs will be impossible to avoid because in most parts of our country, jobs will come from the construction industry - the construction of roads and other infrastructure.

These are not bad jobs; they are good and necessary jobs. You cannot develop a country without developing infrastructure. And in infrastructure development, that is where large numbers of people can be employed.

In most rural parts of our country, people are not looking for office jobs, they are not seeking to be accountants, lawyers and so on and so forth. They are simply seeking to be labourers. And it is in this where most jobs lie in the world, where the greatest numbers can be employed.

We have to set the right priorities and focus on creating the right jobs. Wherever there is a road being constructed, large numbers of people will be employed. And we shouldn't cheat ourselves that our people don't want these jobs, they want them.

We criticise countries like China for sending labourers to come and work on construction sites here. China needs these jobs also because this is where the greatest number can be employed. Therefore, when we undertake infrastructure development projects, let's bear in mind that in doing so, we are in part creating jobs for the present and the future.

A man who has no food cannot wait to eat in the future. If he can't put food on the table today, he will not be there to put food in the future - he will be dead. These are matters of life and death for some of our people.

And although patience is said to be a virtue, the choice here is difficult to make because even if one has to live for the future, one also has to survive the present to be in the future. It shouldn't also be forgotten that the future is not built in the future, the future is built on the threshold of today, on what we do today.

Our greatest challenge as a nation is to create more jobs at a low level and do so very quickly. Unfortunately for us, technology has changed so quickly. Sectors that previously used to create so many jobs no longer need so many people.

For instance, in the mining industry, improvement in technology has reduced the numbers of people needed on a mine. As such, our mines are no longer employing as many people as they used to in the past.

Another sector that has drastically cut down on numbers is agriculture where one person can do so much on a farm. Where one needed more people to harvest a crop, today one combine harvester operated by one person can do a job that used to be done by thousands of people.

Instead of having an army of people planting a field, a planter operated by one person can plant thousands of hectares in a few days. The only sector where the number of people needed may not have reduced that much is the service sector - the tourism sector.

One still needs more or less the same number of people to attend to guests, clean rooms and do all sorts of things at a hotel or lodge. Reasonable investment in this sector can relatively create more jobs in a very short time. And these are not poor jobs; they are quality jobs.

The challenge we face today is of not being able to create sufficient jobs for the great majority of our people in a very short time. Let's bear that in mind at all times. And in this regard, it is important to talk to the people and hear what jobs they are looking for.

The great majority of our people are not looking for jobs in the government service, they are not looking for appointments as diplomats. Those jobs are very few and almost count for nothing. What they are looking for are mass jobs.

Moreover, the great majority of our people have not gone beyond grade twelve. Probably not more than five per cent of our people have gone beyond grade twelve. So the jobs needed by the great majority of our people are what the political leadership of our country may see as poor and temporary jobs.

As we have already stated, labourers are needed in many sectors of our economy. And it is such jobs that the great majority of our people are seeking. Jobs of this nature will be difficult to make permanent because they are based on contracts; when the contract comes to an end, the contractor has no jobs to give until he finds another contract.

Strictly speaking, there is no job that is not important. What is needed is respect for each job and for each worker. Cleaning toilets may be seen as a poor job, but it is a very important job.

Imagine what would happen if there was no one willing to be employed as a cleaner of toilets in the places where we work, in the hotels or lodges where we sleep and indeed even in our own homes! But there is a tendency among us to look at such jobs with no respect.

There is no need for Michael to torture himself with only a certain type of jobs. What is needed is simply to ensure that every worker is treated well and is given the best conditions possible for the type of work he or she is doing. And lastly, there is need for the government to engage the people, to talk about jobs with the people.

Those in government cannot do this alone and they shouldn't think that they alone will create jobs for all of us or that they alone are solely responsible for the creation of jobs. It is a collective responsibility. We all have to work together to create the jobs we need. Leaders lead but the people govern.

Labels: INFORMAL ECONOMY, JOBS, MICHAEL SATA

posted by MrK @ 2:18 PM