Levels of unemployment, especially among the young people should by now be a concern to all citizens.
As we have said on numerous occasions before, high unemployment among the youth is a time bomb waiting to explode.
What is happening is that we are bringing young people who, as a result of their economic disenfranchisement and detachment, feel that they owe no obligations to the society that sired them.
Such young people are often resentful, unruly and lacking in ambition.
These are the young people who turn to addiction through the use of the bottle and drugs.
Not all of it is their fault.
For a greater part, their elders are to blame.
We have abdicated when it comes to providing either direction or leadership.
Failing to provide hope and a sense of belonging to a generation will certainly bring with it a lot of troubles in future.
And that is what we must expect in our instance.
It will certainly catch up with us.
Unemployment among young people is not something that started when the current government came to office.
It has always been there.
What has, however, distinguished this current government from all its predecessors is the simple fact that it has not made concerted efforts to manage much less reduce the levels of unemployment.
The government, it would seem, is distinctly hostile to the aspirations of many young people.
This is so even as it continuously states that it is doing everything to help young people.
Year in, year out, the universities and colleges churn out thousands of young graduates who immediately find out real life is much more difficult than years at college could ever have prepared them for.
In the meantime, it would seem like government’s signature employment program is not much more than Ipelegeng.
Other than that there is the internship program which, in our opinion, is a delay tactic which only temporarily diverts the national attention from the immense troubles and problems which have to face up to ÔÇô and the sooner the better.
We have nothing against Ipelegeng and the internship program.
Such programmes would be much more welcome if circumstances were different from those that we face today as a nation.
The scale of unemployment in Botswana is so massive that it cannot be left to Ipelegeng, which, as a matter of fact, only caters for a tiny and different kind of citizen other than the majority of the unemployed who happen to have some kind of secondary school and now increasingly tertiary education as well.
We call on the private sector to also come to the table with suggestions on how the scourge of unemployment can be confronted.
For their part, government can assemble a team of advisors, made up of private sector individuals who have the respect and esteem to advice on such crisis issues such as is the case with our country’s unemployment levels.
We need strong initiatives otherwise we will continue to spiral off the rails until such time that turning the tide would no longer be possible.
