It’s been 1-year long walk to nothing for youths – Kaunda
By Bright Tembo/ The Mast
Socialist Party (SP) national youth and security chairman Kelvin Kaunda says one year under the new dawn government has been a long walk to nothing for youths.
Kaunda told The MAST that despite the UPND government employing 30,000-plus teachers and 11,000 health workers in their first year of being in government, “it’s nothing but a long walk to nothing”.
He argued that there was nothing unique being done to resolve the challenges of the youths.
“The one year period with regards whether the youths have benefited from the one year in office [of the UPND], is that my honest assumption is that it’s been a year of a long walk. A long walk not to anything but a long walk to nothing,” Kaunda said.
“We have not seen anything unique or anything special this far. Or anything that has been done to resolve the challenges of our youths. Yes one may argue about the issue of employment or the recruitment of teachers and health workers but we are dealing with the obvious thing. The recruitment of public service worker is an obvious thing. But we are looking at something extraordinary.”
He added that because not everyone else is going to be a teacher and not everyone else would be a health worker, “there are a lot of young people in the area of accountancy, marketing, entrepreneur you can name it. This is where we want to see real jobs being created”.
“And from where we stand we have not seen any policy pronouncement which has been made with the intention to deal with these issues because this is where the real jobs will come from. So the recruitment of teachers and health workers is obvious. We have seen past governments recruiting but the only difference is that they have just increased the numbers here and there,” Kaunda said.
“There is really nothing extraordinary that the new dawn government has done in resolving the challenges of our youths. We expect a bit more and we expect the government to do much more in resolving the challenges of our young people.”
He demanded to see a change in policy direction towards the employment of young men and women in the country.
“Not too long ago our young people were removed from the streets in a bid to impress individuals of a certain class. To this date the young people who were surviving on MTN and Airtel booths have no jobs. And these are the young people who voted this party into government. It is also surprising that our leaders when they are voted into office by the same poor young people they get themselves bodyguards to protect themselves from the poor youths that voted for them. What a shame!” noted Kaunda.
“When we do a reflection for our colleagues for the one year that they have been in power, we cannot help it but to say it has been a long walk of nothing this far. And we hope they could do better than what they have done. We must see change from the policy position. We have line ministries in charge of the youths, tell me if there is any major policy pronouncement that has been made towards the welfare of the youths. Nothing!
“We have a ministry of so-called small and medium enterprises. Even before they meet the young people here, even before meeting the entrepreneurs of this country, you have the courage to go and meet businessmen in the other country in the name of the diaspora community and you expect to change the narrative on the ground! Tell me one single meeting which has been held where the young people have been engaged by these institutions in trying to resolve some of their challenges of their time. The only time you will hear that they had a meeting is when they select certain individuals who are masquerading as young people and group them [but] who are you consulting?”