Job exports expose Mugabe

via Job exports expose Mugabe – DailyNews Live 10 September 2015

HARARE – The Zanu PF-led government this week brimmed with joy that at least 8 000 graduates from the country’s tertiary institutions have applied to be placed on database for job placements abroad when opportunities arise.

For a country that boasts of having an official unemployment rate of 11 percent — one of the lowest in Africa — exporting our children to go and work in war-torn countries such as Sudan and Somalia, makes a sad reading for the future of Zimbabwe.

This latest revelation exposes President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF government’s failure to provide the much promised 2,2 million jobs by 2018 to thousands of graduates churned out by tertiary institutions annually.

On the contrary, unemployment is on the increase as more and more companies succumb to the harsh operating environment characterised by a severe liquidity crunch, with the unemployment rate currently estimated to be above 80 percent.

It is our strong contention that the exportation of our labour to foreign lands is a sharp contrast to an ambitious skills retention programme carried out by government in 2006 aimed at fighting the devastating brain drain prompted by Zanu PF’s mismanagement of the economy, resulting in massive job losses and company closures.

The programme’s target was to offer incentives for Zimbabweans in the Diaspora with critical skills to return to the country. Millions of Zimbabweans are immigrants all over the world, as the country’s economic fortunes appear doomed to worsen before they start to improve.

However, like many other well-intentioned government programmes, there has been very little in the way of results when it comes to arresting the ongoing brain drain.

Among the country’s professionals who have left the country for greener pastures include engineers, doctors, accountants, architects and bankers.

But government now regards labour exportation as part of the solution to reducing rising unemployment wrought by quickening company closures, which has resulted in the informalisation of the economy.

Although labour exportation will temporarily help ease the problems of unemployment, fears abound that the move will only result in the haemorrhaging of skills vital to the recovery of the comatose economy.

What Zimbabwe needs at the moment is a new leader, with new ideas to turn around this economy through investor-friendly policies and this will in no time result in employment creation.

Mugabe must simply solve the succession issue in his dying political outfit and hand over power to the next crop of leaders.