EEMBAXU – The northern and eastern regions of Namibia have abundant cattle posts and domestic employment opportunities for unemployed young Namibians, said Kanana Hishoono, the former Swapo Elders’ Council secretary.
Hishoono said this while speaking during the Ohangwena region governor Walde Ndevashiya’s maiden state of the region address (SORA) at the Billy Mwaningange Rural Development Centre at Eembaxu village on Tuesday.
He singled out the regions with youth employment opportunities as Kunene, Omusati, Oshana, Ohangwena, Oshikoto, Kavango East, Kavango West and Zambezi.
“These regions have domestic and cattle herding job opportunities, but our young people, who are ever crying to the government to create employment for them, are unwilling to become domestic workers and herders,” said Hishoono.
He noted that only young people from neighbouring Angola are employed as herders and domestic workers in the said regions, while their Namibian counterparts migrate from the north to the southern parts of the country where they are found at cross-roads begging for employment.
“Otherwise they are engaged in social evils rather than getting employed here and earning some income to support themselves and their families,” stated the retired Swapo Elders’ Council’s secretary.
In his SORA, Ndevashiya indicated that efforts to address youth unemployment is one of the core strategies on the Ohangwena region’s development agenda.
“The youth enterprises that were registered in each constituency with the Business and Intellectual Property Authority the last financial year were hired for the construction and assembling of 384 ventilated improved pit (VIP) dry toilets, of which 32 were constructed per constituency,” he noted.
The youth enterprises, Ndevashiya said, constructed the pit latrines under the Rural Sanitation Programme, to the tune of about N$4.3 million.
The governor revealed that 94 recently trained unemployed community health workers have also been given three-month contractual employment in response to the Covid-19 pandemic by the Ministry of Health and Social Services in the region.
– Nampa