It would seem like when it comes to employment creation, our Government cannot get enough of its own lullaby ÔÇô a song that one sings in order to send a child to sleep.
For some time now, our Government has been singing this lullaby.
They want to send all of us to sleep under a false impression that they are busy creating employment.
When we last checked, unemployment stood at around 20%. And we are quoting conservative figures, released by Government controlled think tanks.
This week a senior official in the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, Louis Malikongwa took the tune of the lullaby to new heights.
He announced that Botswana Government is starting yet another short term, stop gap initiative to fight unemployment   especially among young people.
It is the latest in a series of such similar initiatives.
And as with its predecessors, this latest scheme too is a long short in the dark.
Our government comes across as swimming against the tide.
They still cannot accept that employment creation is the purview of the private sector.
It also is a long term product of proper planning and not kneejerk reaction by a motley crew of disingenuous individuals whose priority is to create a false impression that something is being done, when in actual fact nothing is being done.
To create employment, Government has to come up with schemes and reforms that empower the private sector. These include, but are not limited to tax reforms.
Other than that, this government has to abandon its open hostility against the middle class.
We should never forget how as Vice President, the current President, by a stroke of a pen decreed the abolition of Tirelo Sechaba that had been started by government in the 1980s.
Without consulting the nation he said Tirelo Sechaba was spreading immorality and indiscipline among young people.
It did not occur to him that for all its faults, Tirelo Sechaba fostered a spirit of community service and volunteerism among young people.
Now his government, through one of his friends, Malikongwa says it is starting a Graduate Volunteer Scheme, among other things to “contribute to community development, promote the spirit of volunteerism and reduce idle time” among the youth.
Malikongwa goes on to say that the “participants will not only contribute to community development initiatives but they will also improve their employment readiness through on the job training and experience. Generally, participants will be enrolled where they have accommodation but it is possible for participants to stay with host families, particularly in the rural areas. Emphasis will be on placement in the rural districts where there is need for service. This is intended to improve service delivery in the rural areas by engaging young people in extension work.”
This is a script copied from the same Tirelo Sechaba scheme that was stopped by Ian Khama shortly after he joined politics.
Khama’s holier than thou attitude which drove him to ride a high horse and abolish Tirelo Sechaba in the face of spirited public outcry has caught up with him.
Now he is failing to arrest runaway unemployment among the young people and he has been forced to swallow his pride and create exactly the kind of scheme that he unceremoniously abolished a little less than twenty years ago, albeit under a different name.
Very clearly, things are not going according to Khama’s plan. Or else how does he justify restoring a scheme that he had contemptuously abolished, without even the courtesy of engaging the public.
Compared to Tirelo Sechaba as conceived in the 1980s, the scheme is only different in name.
What Malikongwa does not say is when President Ian Khama reconciled himself to the tenets of Tirelo Sechaba which as per his attitude, he abhorred so much so that he summarily executed long before he became Head of State.
It is difficult to see how Khama or his advisors for that matter perceive the Graduate Volunteer Scheme as providing an opening for the President to have a good sleep or even an decent breather.
The creation of GVS, as Malikongwa calls it is a bad harbinger.
It is signal of worse things yet to come, the greatest of which is utter directionless on the part of Government to fight unemployment.
