EDITORIAL: Geingob’s unemployment misdiagnosis
President Hage Geingob’s remark this week that unemployment in our country is a result of graduates outnumbering job opportunities is a misdiagnosis of epic proportions.
While this could be true elsewhere in the world, unemployment in Namibia is definitely not a result of the supposed success our education system. Not when thousands of vacancies in the public sector cannot be filled due to a lack of money to pay salaries.
Many clinics around the country are manned by one nurse. And when some of these nurses are off sick or go on maternity leave, the clinics are closed and patients are left stranded – if not dead.
The president’s prognosis is insincere and way off the mark. And it should worry all of us that our leaders can’t seem to grasp the genesis of our socioeconomic challenges. It’s like administering Panado to prevent pregnancy.
Geingob conveniently brushed off the failures of his government in creating jobs and rather blamed it on what he termed the success of our education system. Structural issues such as high corporate taxes that scare off investors, misplaced government spending which impedes growth, patronage and corruption are conspicuously omitted.
The driver of this bus on which we are all passengers doesn’t seem to know the destination. Neither where we’re driving from. We are in the middle of nowhere – and the bus is probably without fuel. But who would know, when the driver is asleep at the wheel?
While this could be true elsewhere in the world, unemployment in Namibia is definitely not a result of the supposed success our education system. Not when thousands of vacancies in the public sector cannot be filled due to a lack of money to pay salaries.
Many clinics around the country are manned by one nurse. And when some of these nurses are off sick or go on maternity leave, the clinics are closed and patients are left stranded – if not dead.
The president’s prognosis is insincere and way off the mark. And it should worry all of us that our leaders can’t seem to grasp the genesis of our socioeconomic challenges. It’s like administering Panado to prevent pregnancy.
Geingob conveniently brushed off the failures of his government in creating jobs and rather blamed it on what he termed the success of our education system. Structural issues such as high corporate taxes that scare off investors, misplaced government spending which impedes growth, patronage and corruption are conspicuously omitted.
The driver of this bus on which we are all passengers doesn’t seem to know the destination. Neither where we’re driving from. We are in the middle of nowhere – and the bus is probably without fuel. But who would know, when the driver is asleep at the wheel?
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Namibian Sun
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