BOFEPUSU dismisses Masisi's youth employment promise
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Friday April 6, 2018 15:26
The Federation secretary general, Tobokani Rari, says the new President’s speech on Sunday lacked mention of anything ‘practical’ to address the matter. At his inauguration, Masisi said one of his top priorities would be to address the problem of unemployment, especially amongst the youth who constitute the majority of the country’s population.
During their campaign leading to the 2014 general elections, the party's president and former country president, Ian Khama also outlined unemployment as one of their priorities. However Rari said: “Unemployment can be addressed by adopting a radical change to our education philosophy so that it embraces a dual carriage approach that will see students being channelled into vocational trades and performing arts at an early age.
Otherwise, President Masisi’s speech has not said anything practical about addressing unemployment. I have not noticed any much departure from the known BDP strategies. It will depend on how he will channel resources and revamp his administrative machinery”.
Masisi said young Batswana make up 60% of the country’s population, who are the future leaders; therefore investing in them is building the bridge to the future.
“The realisation of the demographic dividend is of paramount and strategic importance since the success of our youth is the only guarantee of the long-term economic prospects of Botswana. It is imperative therefore, for government to redouble its efforts to optimise the participation of our youthful population in the economy of this country,” he said. In addition, the President said in order to achieve this mammoth task, government should prioritise the implementation of a combination of strategies required to stimulate accelerated economic growth.
He said these practical and realistic strategies would be implemented as a matter of urgency, he continued.
He said the strategies include, but are not limited to scaling up access to technical and vocational education and training opportunities in order to avail the requisite skills for the labour market; promoting digitisation across both the public and private sectors, so as to ensure the availability of real time information in order to expedite decision-making and service-delivery, as well as to grow the domestic ICT sector and create jobs, particularly for the youth.
This is what Khama said in 2014, “Today I will therefore confine myself to confirming what shall be our governing priorities as we move Botswana forward.
These priorities, which were set out in my party’s election manifesto, shall stand as this administration’s collective performance agreement with the nation. They include job creation, food security, expanded land and housing ownership, access to quality education, economic empowerment and the eradication of poverty”.