WINDHOEK- Swanu of Namibia is appealing to the Ministry of Higher Education, Training and Innovation to work with all tertiary education institutions closely to ensure that graduates graduate in employment, rather than graduating in debts and in unemployment.
“The Development of Namibia is solely not serving its purpose; the bank needs to avail grants not loans for graduates or the youth to enter into the business environment for the development of Namibia. Where does the bank expect a graduate to get collateral from if they just graduated? We request the bank to use a graduate qualification as a requirement of obtaining a business loan,” says the league’s President, Brian Ngutjinazo, in a media statement.
He accuses the Ministry of Industrialisation, Trade and SME Development of having failed in controlling the foreign investors who come in the country with their own employees and abandon the qualified youth in Namibia who graduates from vocational schools, University of Namibia (Unam), Namibian University of Science and Technology (Nust) and many others. Ngutjinazo is asking why the ministry is silent about the number of foreign employees brought into the country overlooking Namibians’ needs to work for such companies to gain experience and skills. “We are therefore asking the Ministry of Trade and Industry together with the Ministry of Labour to set up a Commission of Enquiry to investigate the number of Namibians who work for [foreign companies] compared to foreign employees and release their finding by end of May 2019.”
He says the National Youth Service (NYS) is supposed to facilitate employment opportunity for the Namibian youth “however they have staged a form of competition with the vocational schools by offering vocational courses.” The Swanu Youth League is therefore asking the NYS to create platforms for employment of graduates instead of competing with VTCs, Unam, or Nust.
Ngutjinazo further maintains that the Namibian youth is demanding the government to unfreeze all frozen positions such as those of nurses, teaching post, police force, defence force and use the loans that government obtains from Germany and other nations to sustain civil servants, instead of pumping billions of dollars on airports and other infrastructures that needs no expensive renovation.