‘Labour revolution will start with colleges’

Minister of Labour and Manpower Development HENRY MUSSA speaks to BONIFACE PHIRI on allegations that equipment meant for the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (Yedef)—which is now under his ministry—are in bad and almost unusable conditions having stayed idle for five years.

Is it true that the Chinese government will construct 10 technical colleges?

Indeed, the Chinese government has pledged to support infrastructure for our community technical colleges initiative. Initially there shall be 10 colleges complete with equipment. Thereafter, we wish to roll out to all 193 constituencies on our own. We already have equipment enough to cater for the community technical colleges. As a matter of fact, India has also shown interest to support us with more equipment and tutors for the colleges. Just to give you a picture, we have three big warehouses full of equipment for welding, metal fabrication, juice making, bakery and handloom among others. 

But the K1 billion worth equipment you are talking about was initially meant for Yedef and has been lying idle for five years. Are you sure the equipment is still reliable?

Let me say I have ordered the immediate distribution of the machines and equipment to community colleges. Indeed, they have been lying idle for five years but I can assure you that they are still in usable condition because they are made of steel and, as you know, steel is durable. I believe it will be just a matter of lubricating here and there, hence people should not worry that the equipment won’t work. All of them are still in pallets which haven’t been opened at any point. Sustainability is not even causing us any headaches because now they will be installed for skills development and all practicals will be on the equipment. The other factor that necessitated my order is that government is spending a lot of money in rentals for warehousing services for the equipment (about K2 million per month). I felt this was a waste considering that the warehouses themselves are not in good shape. My projection is that by November we should be done with the distribution and commissioning of the equipment. 

Is there any provision that the students graduating from these community technical colleges should receive equipment as start-up?

Graduates obviously will require two things, namely, toolkits and start-up capital. The labour market in the country is very limited and we expect these graduates to start up their own medium and small scale businesses and employ other people. At the end of the day a labour revolution will start from that approach. Government is also in the process of establishing the Malawi Development Bank (MDB) which shall be a window to specifically look into issues of start-up capital for our youth in the skills development programme. The good news is that jobs are already assured in the other related programmes, such as Malata and Cement Subsidy Programme. These programmes will require artisans in form of carpenters, plumbers, welders and others. We are also looking at preparing our youth for the mining industry as you know that we have just completed the geo-mapping of our minerals; it is now just a question of coming up with packages to interested investors to come and exploit the minerals. These foreign direct investors will need local content in terms of labour and this has to be skilled labour. Agro-processing is also another area that requires skills which will be catered for in our community technical colleges.

Why was the equipment  taken from Yedef to the community colleges?

You need skills to operate such sophisticated machines and equipment. This is why they couldn’t be disbursed for the past five years because there was no one with the skills. We feel the youth have to get the skills on how to operate the equipment before you give them. Government is very serious about this and we are convinced that the initiative will cause a revolution in the social and economic development of the nation. n