From ‘well said’ to ‘well done’
Alarmed by a swelling youth population and unemployment, government has done the right thing to invest in an ambitious programme to aid skills development and job creation. JAMES CHAVULA writes.
What a difference a mere K3 000 ($6) can make! To middle-class Malawians, the sum is small change. But for community technical college trainees from poor backgrounds—the sort that accounts for about 60 out of 100 Malawians—it makes all the difference.
Usually, the rural poor grapple to access tertiary education, including skills development, because of limited space in public institutions and unaffordability of profit-making colleges.
Paying K3 000 a semester, nearly 80 young Karonga residents, who enrolled at Ngala Community Technical College in January, count themselves lucky as their once fading dreams become more colourful each day.
“After five years of idling, I wondered what good could come out of me. Gaining skills has shattered despair and the future is looking bright again,” says the young woman guised as Daniella.
She is one of thousands of young Malawians who sat Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) in 2010 and ‘doing nothing’, for her, sometimes entailed transactional sex with men the age of her father.
Daniella neither worked as a bartender nor a street-corner sex worker or the easy-goers spotted in most clubs. She remembers being ‘a home girl’ risking sexually transmitted infections ‘because she couldn’t pester her parents for every little thing’.
“After secondary school, I felt old enough to leave my parents’ house so they could focus on supporting my younger brothers and sisters,” she says.
She rues this path, narrating encounters with men paying more for unprotected sex. However, the major regret is that poverty made her voiceless. She says she was too polite to say ‘no’ to her short-time paymasters.
HIV infections exert immense pressure on the country’s donor-dependent healthcare system which cries for sustainable funding and more health workers.
But Daniella’s exposure to the pandemic reflects how a widespread phenomenon President Peter Mutharika terms ‘aimless idling’ affects citizens aged below 30. They constitute 74 in every 100 Malawians and there is nothing like ‘fruitful idling’ for the unskilled and the jobless.
On March 20, Mutharika launched community colleges in 11 districts with a startling revelation: Every year, over 50 000 young men and women qualify for MSCE, but they cannot all access tertiary education.
According to Malawi National Examinations Board (Maneb) spokesperson Simeon Maganga, 157 746 sat Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) this year.
“With only seven public colleges, we have the least number of people accessingtechnical, entrepreneurial and vocational training in the Sadc region,” he said.
The searching question is: Where do those who fail to make it into the country’s miniscule university and college system go?
Ngala trainees point to uneasy escape route of early marriages, alcoholism and drug abuse. Some engage in crime.
Population and development experts say the country stands to gain a long-term dividend if it invests in the youth through skills development.
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) spokesperson Henry Chimbali says investment is not cheap and the dividend is not automatic.
“But it must be done now to avert the likelihood of a worse crisis unskilled youthmay face,” says Chimbali.
Lately, government has earned recognition of the UNFPA, International LabourOrganisation (ILO), European Union (EU) and World Bank for determinedly harnessing the community college agenda to equip the youth with skills to spur the rise of the country’s weak economy.
Henry Mussa, the Minister of Labour, Youth and Manpower Development says two years ago, Malawi had about two million young loafers with certificates.
“With change of government, the community colleges show our resolve to end youth unemployment through skills development,” he says.
Mussa says enrolment is only going to get bigger.
“There are 2 800 trainees in 11 colleges and we’ll hit 10 000 when the remaining 17 districts roll out. Even more as government is determined to scale down to all 193 constituencies,” he said.
Typically, the existing colleges offer five generic courses—carpentry and joinery, welding, plumbing, brick-laying as well as design and tailoring—that enrol up to 20 learners each.
Youth and Society executive director Charles Kajoloweka commends the initiative, saying: “The community colleges initiative is good, but we need to critically look at the quality and relevance of the lessons on offer.”
The entire education system must nurture useful skills that are up tostandard for the job market and the business sector, he says.
At Ezondweni Community College in Mtwalo, Mzimba North legislator Agnes Nyalonje, who is also deputy chairperson of the education committee of Parliament, is happy government has finally started doing what should have begun at independence in 1964.
She said: “We needed this 51 years ago. In between, many young Malawians have gone to waste because of lack of skills and we cannot blame them for that which we did not provide.”
Quality aside, she says increased access is a must.
“We must find a way to reach out to the youth in the remotest pockets cut away from newspapers and radio signals. No Malawian should be excluded based on where they live,” Nyalonje said.
Founded in 1999, Teveta regulates and certifies manpower development in the country.
Its director of training programmes Wilson Makulumiza-Nkhoma says Teveta is there to ensure the trainees get quality instruction in all trades.
“There has been a lot of talk, recently, about the need for skills development. The community colleges will greatly expand access since formal technical colleges can only take 2 000 people out of over 10 000 applicants yearly. Expect no laxity in quality control,” he says.
Amid praises and promises, the trainees are happy a distrusted political idea is eliminating their big problem. Like one of them said, well done is better than well said.
