31 Jan 2019

The annual presentation of the national budget has always evoked mixed expectations.

From the businessman and woman, to the public officer, the job seeker, and the ordinary man on the street, hopes have always been high that the presentation would spell a brighter future and in the process make life more bearable.

However, while the budget would for the most part often address key issues within the economy, for the individual facing specific hardships, such intrinsic and elaborate segmentation of the contents of the national purse is at times an exercise perceived to be having not much value.

For those Batswana fighting, or simply enduring the non-pleasurable effects of joblessness, listening to the presentation of the national budget can be an unnerving exercise, particularly when it brings no immediate answer to their daily struggles.

The youth, who for several years now have, in particular had to send out one application after the other with the hope of landing a job, the job search process has become somewhat tedious due to its failure to produce the desired fruits.

While many could sympathise with the plight of only the job seekers themselves, their parents also deserve a shoulder to lean on as they most often find themselves having to continue providing for grown-up children.

For 58-year-old Gaborone-resident Ms Prisca Malanga, the scarcity of jobs in the local market is a nightmare that government must address without further delay.

The Mosojane-native, whose only child is unemployed, opined that the lack of jobs in today’s era rendered education worthless as scores and scores of university graduates also found themselves unemployed despite having acquired an education with the hope of securing jobs.

She does not see government economic empowerment schemes as an all-encompassing solution as some people had no desire to own and run businesses.

“Government should devise a strategy that will properly address this problem; a strategy that will bring about permanent jobs for our children,” she said, highlighting the need to have people who are not cut out for entrepreneurship catered for by availing them opportunities for employment.

For 34-year-old Boemo Kedisitse*, the desire that she used to harbour for a government job has dwindled with each passing year, leaving her with absolutely no yearning for one today. “I looked for a job for years and could not find one. 

Today, even if I were to be offered a government job paying a P10 000 monthly, I would decline it without thinking twice,” she said.

Ms Kedisitse, who sells cosmetics at BBS Mall, said working for herself had proved much better than having to toil for another person under the guise of a job and the resultant job security.

Ms Kedisitse pitied fellow holders of Form Five certificates, especially those with no business ambitions.

“If university graduates struggle to find jobs, what more of us who only have Form Five certificates?” she asks rhetorically.

For Ms Matshidiso Moseki, who will be competing her two-year internship in about six weeks, it is a depressing thing to be facing a gloomy future with almost no prospects of landing a job.

While she appreciated the opportunity to acquire skills as well as some experience through the internship programme, she felt it served no purpose for the programme to throw interns out in the cold after the two-year programme, especially in situations where vacancies existed into which they could be absorbed.

Ms Moseki also was of the view that government should turn more focus into developing certain sectors of the economy that carried the potential to create jobs.

Among those she cited the construction industry, which she said if developed, could create countless jobs for Batswana and consequently ease the suffering that many were wading through.

“The construction industry has great potential; people are always building and this is not going to stop. 

Other sectors such as mining are slowly dying away, therefore we should diversify into these other sectors,” she said. ENDS