(The Ethiopian Herald)–In his address for the joint session of the House of Peoples Representatives and House of Federation, President Dr. Mulatu Teshome has announced the establishment of ‘Youth Revolving Fund‘ with ten billion Birr. Since then extensive discussions have been held at various levels as to how the fund is going to be used.
On Feb. 7, 2017, the House of Peoples Representatives has unanimously endorsed the bill providing for the establishment of Youth Revolving Fund. Unlike, the trend in the House, the proclamation has been endorsed without refereeing to pertinent standing committee. This attest government’s commitment to address issues of the youth urgently.
Obviously, Youth Revolving Fund is huge and it is additional financial access for the youth besides the improved youth packages and micro and small enterprise schemes. The move by the government in addressing the concern of the youth, that constitutes more than half per cent of the population,would definitely help realize the national vision becoming a middle income country by 2025.
READ: Reducing Urban Unemployment in Ethiopia
Surely, Ethiopia is on rise and has become the beacon of hope in the turbulent region of Horn of Africa. This is because there are a lot of success stories in meeting most of the Millennium Development Goals and registering double digit rapid economic growth for decade plus years.
Indeed, the so far great news about Ethiopia has not come out of the blue; they have made possible due to the fine tuned economic policy of the incumbent and the hard working nature of the general public.
In this ever changing scenario, the youth should take the lead in securing its active participation and benefits from the ongoing development. With more enhanced efforts, the incumbent is doing its level best on job creation and poverty reduction. Certainly, millions of Ethiopians are getting permanent and temporary job opportunities at all corners of the country. Of course, many of them are the youth.
However, despite the booming of the construction and the service sectors, urban unemployment remains high in Ethiopia. It is because the national labor force is steadily increasing at 4.4 per cent annually over the last two decades. The introduction of new polices and strategies to cope with the prevailing high rate of urban unemployment is a part of government efforts.
It is true that most of the victims of urban unemployment are women and the youth. Therefore, the government has been giving special attention to these segments of the society and carrying out various measures with a view to making them productive citizens and beneficiaries of the economic growth of the nation.
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Obviously, after the government created the opportunities of organizing in micro and small enterprises, a large number of unemployed citizens have taken the advantages of such golden opportunities in a serious manner.
Having paid the loans which they took from lenders, they are currently running their own businesses. Taking these youths as role model, many others are also getting organized in micro and small enterprises than ever before.
As a matter of the fact, the government has been leading a policy that creates hands on citizens that are capable of employing themselves rather than awaiting to be hired in government offices. Thus, this has to continue in a well organized and professional manner.
No matter what the factors to the high urban unemployment in the country are, the government and the public at large have a big responsibility in overcoming such social crises .
Apparently, Ethiopia is doing well in owning well trained manpower in comparison with other developing countries. Nowadays, there are around 33 public universities across the country and eleven more universities will be built within the next three to five years.
For sure, Ethiopia trains hundred thousands fresh university graduates every year so long as the efforts to expand the tertiary education of the country are going on at the current fast pace. Therefore, in one way or another, taking into accounts the rapid sustainable economic growth of the nation, these graduates must be employed with attractive salaries. Moreover, the urban unemployed citizens need to be provided with a lot of job opportunities in a bid to sustain the fast economic growth and ensure fair wealth distribution of the nation as well.
Most importantly, the youth must be in the forefront for the effective utilization of education, finance and support opportunities availed for the youth in fighting maladministration and ailing governance. Then, the coming time would be in favor of the youth as Africa dedicated the year 2017 for them.
Source: The Ethiopian Herald
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