Malawi collecting data on jobless people
Through the Ministry of Labour, Malawi Government has embarked on an exercise of identifying the numbers of unemployed people in Malawi with the aim of putting them in their correct categories to identify an appropriate response.
Speaking in an interview on Thursday, Minister of Labour Henry Mussa said his ministry is using its national presence of district offices to collect the necessary data which will be processed by an inter-ministerial technical committee.
“We want to have the correct numbers and the appropriate categories so that government is able to identify the appropriate approaches in dealing with the challenges,” said Mussa, lamenting that such data is not readily available.
Added Mussa, “We can’t just look at the problem of joblessness as a block. We have people that have never been in class. We have those that dropped out in early primary school or later primary school. We have those that dropped out in early secondary school and those that dropped out in later secondary school. Then we have those that successfully completed secondary schools, but never went to college.
In terms of those that attended college, we have those that dropped out of it and those that successfully completed courses, but don’t have jobs. We can’t deal with these challenges using a single solution. We have to categorise them and identify a solution to each category.”
Mussa explained that the technical committee that will analyse the data includes technicians from ministries of Labour, Youth, Economic Planning and Development, Education and Gender and Social Welfare in order to come up with a harmonised approach that will be cost-effective and easily applicable.
“The courses in the community colleges that government wishes to introduce will be informed by the findings that come at the end of the data analysis,” explained Mussa.
He said his ministry is also exploring the possibility of harmonising all examining bodies in Malawi, after consulting widely, to eliminate duplicity and facilitate the development of tailor-made curriculum in the country’s schools and colleges.
He lamented that certain vacancies in industry including the public sector remain unfilled because qualified people with appropriate and relevant skills can simply not be traced.
“This process will take time, but it is an important process to look at. We need to sort out this problem where needs of industry are not met by the skills that our education system is imparting,” said Mussa.
