Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation Minister Utoni Nujoma has highlighted poor governance as a contributing factor to Namibia’s failure to absorb most graduates into the job market.
Speaking at the launch of the development of the third National Employment Policy (NEP), Nujoma said failures to successfully implement the strategies laid out in the first NEP of 1997 have negatively weighed on set goals.
“It is regrettable that this policy of creating employment was hampered by the absence of clear implementation strategy, monitoring, evaluation and reporting mechanisms,” Nujoma said.
“In addition, the policy was not clearly defined and linked to the National Development Plans. This failure gave birth to NEP2 of 2013, with an aim of promoting full, productive, decent and freely chosen employment and reducing inequality, but still, nothing happened, hence we are here today to review and develop new policy mechanisms.”
He said despite the setback ,”which has left the country in a predicament of social unrest as the nation is revolting in demand for jobs,NEP2 showed some growth of 3.7%, but unemployment remains stubbornly high increasing to 46%, making Namibia the sixth country globally with the highest rate of youth unemployment.”
The development of NEP3 was necessitated by the finding of the evaluation which revealed that the existing policy was not fully implemented.
“Unemployment statistics in particular among the youth, stand to have worsened significantly since the advent of Covid-19, hence the utmost sense of urgency is needed to reverse this trend. Namibia has since independence struggled to overcome developmental challenges such as high poverty, unemployment and inequality, of which the government is fully aware, therefore the reason why they are priorities in the Harambee Prosperity Plans, Vision 2030 and the NDPs,” he said.
The Labour Minister added that it is clear the conventional macroeconomic framework, which puts emphasis on the results of economic growth would automatically increase employment and reduce poverty, has not worked for Namibia, despite being classified as an upper-middle income.
“The country has struggled to translate that relatively high income into broad-based gains for the wider population,” Nujoma said, acknowledging some of the shortfalls that need to be addressed.
