AS YOUTH EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES PROVE TO BE ELUSIVE PARTICULARLY IN THE MIST OF THE PANDEMIC ,BASIC INCOME MAY PRESENT AN IMMEDIATE SOLUTION

 

THE LACK OF WORK OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE YOUTH  IS A TICKING TIME BOMB. UNIVERSAL INCOME CAN BE A SOLUTION.

The 12th August every year marks the international youth day. The theme for IYD 2021 was "Transforming Food Systems, Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health". 

Around 60% of citizens in Africa are young people, the AU estimates that there are 400 million African citizens are between the ages of 18-35. All these young people need access to education, jobs and  prosperous futures for themselves and their families. Sadly the economic and political systems in Africa seems inadequate to cater for the society made up of mainly the young people. Young people are a special demographic in the sense that they need opportunities to get educated, for work and for entrepreneurship.

The youth in eSwatini  have equally borne the brunt of youth unfriendly policies that have ,for instance, seen cuts in social expenditure on youth oriented programmes such as scholarships and weak support for other youth oriented economic activities such as the Youth Entrepreneurship Fund which ,earlier in the year was exposed for offering an entrepreneur a meagre E800.00 to conduct their enterprise.

With reference to the labour market the jobs that are increasingly being created and are readily available to young people are the low paying jobs with no benefits. In sectors such as the public sector jobs that are available are fixed term contracts jobs with very limited benefits and certainly no pension savings. In this current period ,for instance, about a quarter of the nurses are now hired on fixed term contracts. Similarly a large number of teachers are also working on a fixed contract basis with no pension savings. Worse the government have used their zero growth policies to curtail the employment of critical workers such as teachers, in the process creating shortages of teachers in schools and lowering the quality of education for generations of young people.

Even in the private sector the spaces for youth advancement in the labour market has narrowed over the years. Developing countries like eSwatini are struggling to attract Foreign Direct Investment ,particularly manufacturing investment. Investment that eventually comes that which leverages on market access to pay low salaries. Industries such as the  the textile or garment industry  also notorious for paying minimum wages to workers who often have to take care of full families that include siblings and parents with that salary. In the commercial sector the available jobs are low skilled jobs routine jobs such as cleaning and security guard jobs. Demographically the workers in this sector are becoming younger and younger underscoring the fact that young people are desperate for job opportunities in order to survive.

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Another development is that there have been noted increases in the participations of the youth in the informal sector (sometimes under the guise of entrepreneurship). Informal work is characterised by precariousness of working conditions  such as the fact that for workers work for long and irregular hours with no benefits, no workplace health and safety mechanisms and for low pay. In earlier years , work in the informal sector could be temporary, something carried out while awaiting a “real” job to be available in the job market. Now work in the informal sector is becoming a norm wherein workers can spend more and more years because of a lack of work opportunities in the rest of the economy.

The foregoing demonstrates that there are thousands of  young people whose lives are on a standstill for years and years with no prospects of improvement because of a lack of opportunities and that is the ticking time bomb. 

This then begs the question as to what shall be done one issue has not been given attention, namely Basic Income or the Universal Basic Income.  Basic Income is the payment of money to a predetermined set of recipients. This concepts has been found to make strong positive impact socially and economically on recipients. For the youth who are having a difficult transition from their schooling and or training years into the job market era of their lives, the basic income can be of great assistance even towards establishing entrepreneurship pursuits.

In the midst of all the challenges facing the youth today, the basic income can enable the youth to have better living conditions regardless of whether opportunities in the job market are there or not.