MAJI HAYAPASWI KUWA JANGA KWA WATANZANIA

 

Mkoa wa Singida uko katikati mwa Jamhuri ya muungano wa Tanzania, ni mkoa maarufu kwa kilimo cha vitunguu na Alzeti, mafuta ya Alzeti yamekuwa maarufu sana nchini na yamejizolea umaarufu mkubwa sana nchini. Cha kusikitisha wakazi wa mkoa wa Singida wanakabiriwa na uhaba mkubwa sana wa maji kiasi cha kuhatarisha afya na ustawi wa mkoa huo

 

katika picha ni moja ya magati ya kuchotea maji katika manspaa ya Singida ambapo mtu mmoja hulazimika kukaa katika eneo la kupatia maji kwa zaidi ya masaa mawili ndipo apate maji

 

juhudi zinahitajika kukamilisha mradi wa maji unaoendelea kujengwa katika manspaa hiyo ili kuwasaidia wananchi kupata huduma bora ya maji

Employment as the way to reach Economics in EAC

Every day people especially youth in East Africa are fighting for employment, and no one agreed that people can live without having a job somewhere in the origin country or elsewhere, and most of them are thinking to be employed in the biggest company or in the Government, but they failed to reach their goals

In this feature, I would like to go though in brain storming about employment and its contribution to African economics, I would like to help my reader to find new way of fighting against poverty by self employment lather than depending on to be employed

Before; let us explain about employment, people especially youth can think what is employment; Employment is an agreement between an employer and an employee that the employee will provide certain services on the job, and in the employer's designated workplace, to facilitate the accomplishment of the employer organization’s goals and mission, in return for compensation. The agreement can be verbal, implied, or an official

This definition show that if you don’t work for somebody you’re not employed, this is very bad perception for those who have vision to change their livelihood, we should think on our self employment as the way to meet economic development

Employment is not economics but it can help people to have good life, either employment is one of the ways to reach economics either in family, country as well as worldwide level

If that is so; let us see the definition of terms economics, there are many definitions of economics but all depends on who are finding the definition and for what purpose; for this feature I can define that;-

Economics is the study of the production and consumption of goods and the transfer of wealth to produce and obtain those goods. Economics explains how people interact within markets to get what they want or accomplish certain goals. Since economics is a driving force of human interaction, studying it often reveals why people and governments behave in particular ways.

There are two main types of economics: Macroeconomics and microeconomics. Microeconomics focus on the actions of individuals and industries, it is a dynamics between buyers and sellers, borrower and lenders. Macroeconomics on the other hand takes a much broader view by analyzing the economic and activity of an entire country or the international market place

The National Youth Development Policy in Tanzania defines a youth as ‘a boy or girl who is in transition from childhood to adulthood’. The policy adopts the definition of youth as declared by the United Nations, which defines a youth as a person aged between 15 to 24 years. The analysis of youth employment is based on this age group.

 

The survey results showed the magnitude of the youth unemployment. The number of employed youths according to the Tanzania definition is 4,166,620 while the unemployed youths are 823,909 that is 16.5 percent of the total of the employed and unemployed youths. This rate is drawing attention to the government of Tanzania, East Africa Countries and other economic stakeholders hence the need for the survey.

 

The standard definition shows that the number of employed youths in 2000/01 is 4,544,176 while the Tanzania definition shows youth employment as 4,166,620 persons. Applying the Tanzania definition, there is a drop of employment of 377,556 youths, which is 8.3 percent. Thus the Tanzania definition shows unemployment has gone up. The standard definition shows the number of unemployed youths is 446,352 while the Tanzania definition shows the number of unemployed youths as 823,909, a rise in unemployment of up to 377,557 youths which is about 85 percent.

 

The Tanzania definition has been introduced in order to create a base for future comparisons because the trend in future will put more emphasis on the Tanzania definition. However, in this survey in order to understand the trend and position of youth employment a comparative analysis is made between the 1990/91 and the 2000/01 based on the standard definition.

 

According to the 2000/01 survey, 4,544,176 youths aged between 15 – 24 years were employed and these constitute 73.7 percent of the entire youth population. The unemployed youths are 446,352, which is 7.2 percent. The inactive youth population is 19.1 percent.

 

The employed young females were 2,315,070, that is about 51 percent of the total employed youths. Employed male youths were about 49 percent of the employed youths. The number of unemployed youths is 446,352 of which 56.5 percent are female youths.  The inactive youth population is 1,175,513 of which 50.7 percent are male youths.

 

The total employed population in Tanzania according to the standard definition is 16,914,804. The employed youths of the ages between 15 – 24 years constitutes 24.6 percent of the entire employed population from 5 years to 70 years and above.

 

The total employment in Tanzania in the 1990/91 was 10,424,418. Youth employment was 2, 906,788 persons that is about 27.9 percent of the entire employed population. In the 1990/91 Labor Force Survey youths unemployment was 154,432 persons that was 33 percent of the entire unemployed population. In the year 2000/01 the total unemployed youths were 446,352 which were about 44 percent of the entire population. Thus during the ten year period (1990/91 – 2000/01) youth unemployment has increased by 11 percent.

 

Youth unemployment is due to a number of factors, which include lack of skills and training, lack of credit facilities, problems of transition.

These problems affect youths, particularly those aged between 15 – 19 years who have just completed primary education. Even in the rural areas which offer unique opportunities because youths learn different occupations from child hood, employment is limited during the off farming season because there are no enough off farm activities to occupy the youths.

In 1990/91, the number of not economically active youths was 1,098,481 that were 25.5 percent of the entire population, which was not economically active. In the 2000/01 the inactive youth population was 1,175,513, which was 14.4 percent of the entire inactive population.

 The unemployment rate in Tanzania was estimated at 10.7 percent in 2011. Historically, from 2001 until 2011, Tanzania Unemployment Rate averaged 11.88 Percent reaching an all time high of 12.90 Percent in December of 2001 and a record low of 10.70 Percent in October of 2011. The unemployment rate can be defined as the number of people actively looking for a job as a percentage of the labor force.

This statistics shows that Tanzania and east Africa countries still in trouble and we have big gap between employed and unemployed, and there are many people those who living without producing and they don’t contribute anything in our economic development and they are burden to their family.

 What are the youth efforts and initiatives?

Fighting against poverty has two ways, first, the fighters should have knowledge on poverty war, and the education is only way to him or her to reach the goals or to win the where youth should go and attend the class where teachers or lecturers will teach the class on what is poverty, what is development and how people should do to overcome the problems, here I mean that without education no development, but this will happen for those who believes in education

Second type of poverty war is having business capital to run the project planned, some of people are believe that money is everything in life, yes I can agree with them because now days you cannot get anything, human need, social need and even heath needs without having money. So this kind of poverty fighters are depending on money hence money can serve those who have knowledge on how to use and maintain it for projects progress and future

Experience shows that many people do say “Life has no formula” and if someone succeeds, others do say its God’s Blessing, today I have learned that there is a formula of life.

I and my fellow journalists were talking to Director of Standard Voice Limited who owns many entrepreneurship companies in Tanzania, Mr. James Japhet Daud, during my interview to him in Dar es Salaam on fairer and success of youth in entrepreneur and even in employment, Mr. Daud told me that, there is a formula of life, no one can succeed the life without having and using life formula 

He told me that the formula of life is E + R = O. Let me elaborate the abbreviations. E stands for an (EVENT) + R which stand for (RESPONSE) which is equal to O, an (OUTCOME).

 In a simple language an Event is the ACTION plus RESPONSE; that is the way you respond to the action, in other word is PERFORMANCE which can be positive or negative depending on how you treated an event. If the outcome is poor then you have to change your response, but if you work hard you can receive good profit in a case of business or good salary if you are an employee.

Mr. Daud elaborated more by giving examples; “For instance two persons receive 1 million as a salary per month that is an event; but how are they going to use the money is different. One may spend the money extravagantly, profligately, wastefully, while the second one may invest in establishing a barber shop etc. Automatically the outcome can’t be the same! ”

He added that, if someone is thinking about an event, there is always visualization in the mind which is very important. Someone has to visualize be it in sound, mind, color etc.

Also there is subconscious mind, which is hidden plus RAS which is an abbreviation of Reticular Activating System or arrangements, whereby every human being has got it in mind, but others die without using it; they die while their minds are still new. That is real the way you decide to live.

When you go around small and large town you will meet large number of youth with age between fourteen and twenty five, those all are living either in one room with no mattress bed and domestic equipments, they live depending on daily income which they use it to pay for food and room rent

After facing difficult of life in their village is when they decided to travel up to the cities to seek any kind of Job, but most of them are depending on the second way of fighting against poverty

Capital (Money) is only way they think they will win and becomes reach then they will go back at their home, but the result comes that in town life is hard than in their village

Due to facing hard life most of youth those who fled their village to town, they have been engaged in crime  activities due to mob psychology  in order to get short cut good life in the town, and most of those who being in the wrong behavior they have killed and among of them are sentenced to jail

When we talk about youth I can’t separate women and men, there are some differences in fighting for life, e.g. men can try to be engaged in heavy duty like caring baggage at the ferry,, farm at bus stand and even in the factories, either social experience show that a male can also happen to be in armed robbery any other crime activities,

But female by human being they have quit deference to male, some of them in Tanzania once life comes heavy they decide to be married and those who failed to get husband they fled to town to find simple job like house keepers and to be the waiters in the hotel, pub, bar, and even in casinos

In some of his speeches the ex-prime minister of Tanzania Hon. Edward Lowasa said, “Unemployed youth is another atomic bomb for Tanzania, east Africa and Africa at large; let us have courage and heavy decisions on the youth employment”

In Kenya the researched result done by the organization called The Youth Banner shows that unemployed rate of youth are about 40 percent, it seems that the employment is challenge for all east African countries

The research results show that “It is therefore not uncommon to find young people idling on pavements or sited in groups with nothing to do. Unemployment has led to the soaring crime rates among youth in the country. Furthermore, idle youth have been used by unscrupulous politicians from time to time to cause chaos or to start gangs that terrorize people”

Like honourable Lowasa the members of Parliament of Tanzania from Monduli constitution said about unemployed, Professor Inonda Mwanje, from republic of Kenya commented the same and  quoted in the daily nation newspaper says that  "unemployment among youth is a time bomb that is about to explode". (Nov. 2009).

When I traveled around East Africa countries especially Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, I found so many groups of people fighting for daily breads and all of them are crying that the life is too hard, I went through their feelings and found that no one has serious strategy to find the solution lather than crying against government and political party that are in position of ruling their government

In the Bus stand of Singida, I saw so many young Tanzanian selling different farm and factory products like soda, biscuits, water, banana, potatoes, and extra. Most of them are very young under 18 years and they are running across the buses in order to show their business to Bus passengers as their only dependable customers

John Jingu is young of 16 years old, he left his Village called Makiungu in Singida District since 2009 before finishing his primary school studies standard Seven, now he is working as house keeper and same times he used to sell domestics product of his boss, John is who wakeup in the early morning and taking boxes of biscuits and tins of palm oil up to the Bus stand and start running rear of the buses to fetch customers

In his testimonies he is explain that; he forced to leave his father and mother and his home due to lack of family basic needs in their house and he decided to fled its home to town to fight for well being

“I was living in very difficult way, no enough food, no god garments, and in our school I was one of the pupils who haven’t event good uniform and exercise book as well as pen, so due to the poor living I decided to come here in town to search for job and good life

So we observe that poor life in the family it is forcing child labor in East Africa and destroying human and child rights, the poorest family sometimes they used their children’s as tools to fight against poverty

So many children in the village are now fighting to shift from their home to town where they think that there is a job, and due to that most of them they stop to continue with their studies

When we found too many group of pupils and students stopped to continue in school because of economy it means that the African continental will still in mark time and we will lose a lot in development change 

Children in Misungwi District support their parents in business in order to earn their daily bread. These businesses are conducted in special day’s market known as “minada” due to their schedule. The children do these business so as they can be given the school fees

The businesses have impact to children school life because when the child engages in business he is in the risk of quitting school so as to use more time in business than at school.

Women are the most people who engage in Entrepreneurship, Most women who are entrepreneurs are the one who are independent and their families depend on them in provision of basic needs like clothes, shelter and food

Mary Luya of 35 year old, she is the successful woman in Singida who own the cafeteria and this business gives her enough money to provide the needs in her family.

As hard working woman and the boss in the business she took initiative of preparing the food for her customers as good as possible and she always train other workers in her business to patient to the customers because customers need care all the time

But when individuals people are fighting against poverty, we observe that the East African countries has lack of good policy that have to be used to empower their people to solve the economic challenges

Any policy should be the bridge to people to pass on when they are practice their economic activities and priorities, but if these policy as well as regulatory will not acquire the human need automatically there is no need to have such system

When African country especially East Africa fighting against poverty through enhancing youth and women employment our authority should think how their people are gaining economically through the economic policy that we have, because without changing the remained policy or if we will still have people in the power with no commitment to youth and women employment is very dangerous for development and even African peace.

The International labor organization ILO has created so many policies on handling the employment crisis in the world but we can see that the measurement was not taken serious in Africa

The resolution provides a portfolio of tried and tested measures in five areas: macro-economic policies, employability, labor market policies, youth entrepreneurship and rights. It underscores the need for balance, coherence and complementarily across the policy measures.

Let us think on how we can use economic policies and youth’s power to build our countries economy in East Africa and Africa at large, let youth pray their role in making change of true, peace and security development Ends

Writer: Prosper L. Kwigize

+255 786 200 518, prosperkwigize@gmail.com

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