Unemployment

I have often wondered what would happen to me after I graduate from varsity(which is not very far). With every day that passes by l get anxious and more anxious about whether or not l will get a job or I will be unemployed for the next 5 years. I know of people who graduated years back and are still unemployed. I can just imagine how painful it is for someone to go through 3/4/5 years of varsity only to be unemployed for the next decade.If they are lucky to get employment it would be temporary teaching.

There is a vast majority of varsity graduates who cannot even secure a position as graduate trainees because people in companies are employing their own. There are certain companies where I have heard you are not likely to get a job if you are not Shona or Ndebele. They say people are getting employed on a tribal basis(that much is true for some companies or organisations, l have seen it before). If you are not connected (they say) you cannot get a job.

Just yesterday I smiled to myself as l read an article from one of the local papers newsday. The article was about the suspended ZBC CEO Happison Muchechetere who had said that George Charamba, the secretary for Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, was employing untrained personnel to work in the studio.I remembered the time that we were looking for attachment, went to ZBC to submit our CVs and we never got responses. Our industrial co-ordinator actually told us that we were not really going to get attached at ZBC. I still wonder why he said that .Sometimes l think its because he was aware of the corruption taking place there.

Without only looking at graduates, there are those people who may not have gone as far as gvarsity or college but are trying to make ends meet. At some point the government introduced the youth fund which was supposed to help youths get loans to start their businesses. If I am not mistaken l think it was part of the indigenisation programme. Many youths tried to access those loans but failed to because they allegedly said they did not have ZANU PF membership cards. Some allege that those incharge of disbursing funds wanted to be bribed so that they can create a business plan for an individual and make them get the loan. Some cases where worse because it was alleged that these officials connived with some people, created fake business plans and get the money for themselves and share.

While some people are trying to make ends meet, trying to start business either because they cannot get employment or whatever reasons they have, those employed to help the unemployed misuse the funds, misallocate these funds!! It is indeed a sad story.

There are those people who are not employed and do nothing about it because they did not receive any educational training or because they decided to quit “boring” school. These are the most annoying because everytime I leave my house, they are sitting by the road waiting to ask for money to buy beer. These people irritate the living hell out of me because they think that because someone is employed they have money to donate to them every single day. All they think about is beer day in and day out, week in and week out till year end.

But is it a matter of choice? Do they choose to do that or they have no option but to sit and do nothing? Maybe it is partly because there are no job opportunities that carter for them, or maybe its because they are too lazy to wake up and do something about their situation.

 But for all it is worth, l still think that most of them are just victims of circumstances, it could be the economy, it could be family background, religion or jus mere ignorance or laziness.