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Emphasis on decent jobs for youth

2022-09-14  Staff Reporter

Emphasis on decent jobs for youth

With the high youth unemployment rate in Namibia, discussions are now slowly shifting towards the importance of creating decent jobs.

These are the sentiments shared by Shona Ngava at the Decent Jobs for Africa workshop for young women and men, organised by the African Regional Labour Administration Centre (ARLAC) in Harare, Zimbabwe, recently.

ARLAC is a training centre based in Harare that provides coaching for labour administration officials from its 19 member countries (predominantly Anglophone Africa). 

The centre also provides consultancy and advisory services, undertakes research and publishes training materials in labour administration.

Ngava represented Namibia through the Global Apprenticeship Network Namibia (GAN Namibia) and the Namibian Employers’ Federation.

Namibia, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Uganda, Eswatini, Lesotho, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe attended the tripartite workshop organised for employers’ organisations, trade unions and governments. 

Highlighting why the workshop was important, especially for Namibia, he said: “A workshop of this helps us understand how we can deal with the issue of unemployment, skills shortage necessary for decent employment and helps us identify ways to improve high employment rates in Africa”.

The workshop looked at promoting decent working environments for youth in Africa and further encouraging the creation of new opportunities for decent wage employment for young women and men across multiple African nations.

At the event, Zimbabwe’s labour minister Paul Mavimba shared that the continent needs to harness the skills of its youth and make decent work a reality.

“The concept of decent work entails work that offers fair income, equal pay and guarantees working conditions that are safe,” he said.

Senior employment specialist at the International Labour Organisation Bernd Mueller feels a lack of labour environment leads to a poor and unfavourable decent work environment.

“There should be indicators that can be used to assess whether a specific country offers decent work environments for its people. National Employment Policies are a good guide and a good start to provide decent work for people,” he shared.


2022-09-14  Staff Reporter

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