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.
By Beyene D. (The Ethiopian Herald) |
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 Goals and registering double digit rapid economic growth for over one decade. The nation also envisages to be a middle income countries by 2025.
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.
These days, Ethiopians have definitely enabled to see a light at the end of the tunnel more than never before. Moreover, from time to time, the number of Ethiopian millionaires are increasing and millions of Ethiopians are getting permanent and temporary job opportunities at all corners of the country.
However, according to some reliable sources, despite of the booming of the construction and the service provision 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.
Henceforth, the government of Ethiopia has been introducing and designing new polices and strategies to cope up with the prevailing high rate of urban employment in the country. For instance, more recently the ruling party has announced that it would do its level best on job creation and poverty reduction in the coming five years. It also will establish a ‘ Mobile Youth Fund’ allocating ten billion Birr and carry out various activities aimed at widening financial services as well as formulating new ideas for the youth .
It is true that most of the victims of urban unemployment are women and youth. Therefore, the government has been giving special attentions 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.
For example, two years ago, thousands of unemployed citizens were registered in Addis Ababa alone through door to door registration program. Hopefully, the gathered information during registration period would be used as an input in the efforts to create new job opportunities in a big city like Addis Ababa.
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 state run money lenders, they are currently running their own businesses. Taking such youth 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 universities across the country and eleven more universities will be built within the next three or five years.
For sure, Ethiopia will have thousands of 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 in to 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.