14 Feb 2024

The country continues to come up with strategies and interventions to address the youth unemployment scourge,Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Ms Annah Mokgethi has said.

Answering a question in Parliament on Monday, Ms Mokgethi said one major strategy had been to facilitate youth entrepreneurship development in order to stimulate production, secure self-sufficiency and create jobs.

The strategy, she said, had been done through, among other things, start-up financing through the Youth Development Fund, which provided youth entrepreneurs with capital to start businesses and create employment in the process.

“In the past two financial years, preference has been for funding sectors with more potential to employ higher numbers of people, especially the youth.

Such sectors are manufacturing, agriculture and its value chain and innovation,” she said.

She said preferential schemes or affirmative action in favour of the youth had been extended to the youth and their enterprises in order to assist their growth and facilitate their job creation potential.

The minister added that the schemes had been extended to the youth in public procurement, acquisition of land and tender documents in order to facilitate their economic activities for job creation.

She noted that the country recently finalised its national employment policy which would guide the efforts of the country to create decent jobs for Batswana.

Furthermore, Ms Mokgethi said the national productivity and competitiveness policy was being finalised to provide guidance in addressing low productivity.

She said 40 036 graduates were unemployed as per the 2023 (quarter 3) quarterly multi topic survey.

“These include artisan, technical/vocational, diploma and degree levels,” she said.

Minister Mokgethi said from October 2019 to October 2023, 1 310 employees lost their jobs due to retrenchments.

“It must be noted that the statistics provided only reflect the redundancy information submitted to the commissioner of labour by companies that had completed their retrenchment process,” she said.

Ms Mokgethi said reasons cited by businesses for retrenchments were mainly financial constraints and lack of business due to hardships brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

She said the COVID-19 era had demonstrated the need for the establishment of a comprehensive, adequate and sustainable social protection system to cushion not only employees, but also employers in times of need.

“It became quite evident that countries that had such mechanisms in place were better placed to deal with the effects of the pandemic,” she said.

Notwithstanding the above, Ms Mokgethi said government’s commitment to building an inclusive and sustainable economy enshrined in the principle of leaving no one behind was working on coming up with appropriate social protection systems for the world of work which would provide inclusive and shock responsive social protection services.

She said several options, including the unemployment insurance fund and occupational broad-based pension scheme would be looked into as possible mitigation measures for people who may have lost their jobs.

“The most viable system will be considered,” she said.

Ms Mokgethi also noted that there were several factors affecting the labour market, adding that the period under review experienced economic setbacks due to COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war which adversely impacted economic growth.

She said as the global economy was slowly recovering, government was accelerating development plans such as the delivery of key capital infrastructure which would open employment opportunities.

“A deliberate effort by government to ensure that citizen companies heavily participate in infrastructural development will ensure employment opportunities in the sector which for years experienced minimal citizen participation,” she said.

She said the total number of jobs created since October 2019 to September 2023 was estimated 87 721.

Ms Mokgethi said service sectors such as ICT, legal, insurance, health, financial, consulting and many others generated most jobs during the period at 47 706 followed by the agric-business sector at 21 191 then manufacturing sector at 9 849.

She said the rate of youth unemployment from 2019 to 2022 reflected 28.8 per cent in 2019, 32.4 per cent in 2020, 34.4 per cent in 2021 and 33.5 per cent in 2022, adding that the national rate of unemployment currently stood at 25.9 per cent as at quarter three of 2023.

Ms Mokgethi said reasons for high youth unemployment included  low productivity leading to slow economic growth, slow economic diversification leading to economic sectors failing to create the necessary number of jobs, skills mismatch in the labour market and the small size of the private sector, leading to low jobs created.

Mr Leepetswe Lesedi, Serowe South MP had asked the minister to state the number of jobs created by government from October 2019 to date and the sectors at which most of the jobs were created and the number of jobs per sector.

MP Lesedi also wanted to know the rate of youth unemployment from 2019 to 2022 and the total rate of unemployment and why youth unemployment was high in the country.

He asked the minister to state the comprehensive plans, solutions and strategies in place to create employment for the youth and the cause of high unemployment of graduates.  

The minister was also asked to give the number of people who had lost jobs in the last three years and those who had lost jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and if the ministry would consider introducing unemployment compensation to cushion all those who had lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as unemployment insurance and unemployment benefits for unemployed youth graduates. ENDS