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The risks facing an employment fund
2006-05-17 09:07:32
By mireny john
Unemployment is both an economic and social menace. That is why every modern state is keen at designing strategies and policies for fighting against the threat.
Involuntary unemployment in Tanzania has been increasing over the two decades, with more that 8,000,000 graduates leaving the country’s school system annually, but most of them missing job placements.
In addition, economic reforms from the early 1980s swept the blotted parastatals and public utilities, causing unprecedented levels of job losses in the public sector.
Unfortunately, the impressive economic growth rate figures often rattled out by bureaucrats do not reflect the reality of things on the ground.
Ideally, an expanding and resilient economy, other odds incubated, must at least be able to absorb to a certain extent, a bulging workforce.
Otherwise, a 6 per cent growth rate is nominal, not real.
A novel idea has now been mooted by the government. It intends to set up an employment development fund that would extend loans to the unemployed youths.
The initiative sounds nice: Mobilising Tsh.10bn to help the jobless youths start own businesses or beef up their capital purse.
The unforeseen risks standing ahead are redoubtable, because this is not a social welfare scheme. Since the hoary past, any lending scheme not linked to some kind of collateral proved to be difficult to manage sustainably.
It does not imply, however, that the scheme is doomed to fail from the outset, but the challenge is how to manage the in-built contingencies effectively.
Probably the correct entry point is not about building up a fund but creating cognitive and objective operatives through which businesses can be set up, flourish and create incomes.
One could suggest a piloting approach: Brainwash the youths about market rules and the dictum of enterprising.
Over the longer run, our school systems should strive to create enterprising minds, not the recitation and passing on examination papers.
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