Maravi

Unemployment and hunger breed impatience - Mutati
By Kombe Mataka
Fri 27 Dec. 2013, 14:01 CAT

FELIX Mutati has warned that increasing youth unemployment will begin to create impatience among young people if not addressed. Mutati said youth unemployment was one of the major challenges the PF government was faced with.

He said the PF government particularly had the challenge of creating volumes of long-term and predictable jobs to address youth unemployment.

"The bulk of jobs that we have been able to create could be about maybe 300,000, whatever that number may be. The bulk of those are temporary jobs arriving out of the construction and infrastructure sectors; the story where you employ people for three to six months," Mutati said.

"What the economy needs is sustainable employment that is long-term and predictable. That is the biggest challenge that this government has faced in 2013, which they must begin to address."

Mutati said employment, a reliable source of income for many people, was key in advancing development.

"If we don't address the youth unemployment which continues to grow, it doesn't matter how else you define governance, governance can be defined from the ability to be able to have something in your tummy. Once you have that, then you can deal with logic," he said.

"If you have nothing in the tummy, logic doesn't apply and that is how you see that in a little while, before long, there is a mob. It is because the level of hope and opportunity appears to be diminishing and when that happens, people become impatient. So we have to address the impatience and that is what we must do. Of course, it is a long road."

And Mutati observed that the government had not been able to balance the 2013 budget appropriately.

He said the supplementary expenditure by the government had moved from 10 per cent to 25 per cent of the budget, something he said should not be encouraged.

Labels: FELIX MUTATI, MMD, PF

posted by MrK @ 1:12 PM