Councils empower youths

By Alice Emasu

The youth have been advised not to boycotttoday’s celebrations but instead use the occasion to advocate for their rights. Shaft Nasser Mukwaya, executive secretary, National Youth Council, says the youth had planned to boycott today’s function because of the Governments proposal to scrap the youth councils.

Mukwaya is hopeful that the government will change its stand on the matter and reconsider maintaining the youth structures.

“Now that the Local council elections have been postponed until further notice, it is likely that the government is discussing it and would come up with a better solution to the youth councils,” he notes.

JInja youths during a health march. Their plight should not be ignored

According to recent global statistics, 238 million out of 1.059 billion young people aged between 15-14 years are poorer members of the communities. They survive on less than $1 per day. They constitute majority of the people like the women and children.

To raise awareness on the plight of young people for better planning and focus, governments are marking today’s international youth day under the theme; ‘Tackling poverty: the role of the youth in wealth creation for all.’

Mukwaya says of the proposed scraping of the youth councils, “It would be a big loss to youth especially those who are using the councils to practice leadership and to access government programmes for their economic, social and political empowerment.”

He says the youth still find the councils very relevant to them especially in terms of opening up leadership opportunities for them. According to Mukwaya, youth councils have played a very important role in helping young people to jump out of the poverty circles.

He advises the youth to advocate for the amendment of the youth councils multi-party politics.

A youth who spoke on condition of anonymity advises young people not to be intimidated by public debates questioning the relevance of the councils. He says some people are echoing President Museveni’s proposal to scrap the councils arguing that they are NRM organs and would therefore, not work under the multi-party political system.

However, since their establishment over 20 years ago by the National Resistance Army, following the 1991 recommendations by the member states of the commonwealth countries to make deliberate efforts to involve at least over 60% of young people in the decision-making process, the youth councils have been a big force in empowering young people.

They have helped to mobilise and organise them to form themselves into community groups right from the sub-county levels in most parts of the country.

The youth groups, he says, were meant to enable the youth get access and grab economic empowerment opportunities within their reach like the micro-finance services. This approach was developed after realising that many micro finance institutions were reluctant to extend their services to young people because of their high mobility. They were therefore missing out of national economic empowerment programmes aimed at helping poor and marginalised groups including women to start income generating activities because of their high mobility.

Though there are no up-to-date statistics on how many young people have accessed micro-finance credit and are now engaged in income generating activities, one thing is clear that some youth are engaged in business. They have benefited from the credit services, says Mukwaya.

“The youth groups were strengthened by the government’s programme of ‘prosperity for all,’ he notes. But the councils have also contributed in advocating for the externalisation of the labour policy in an attempt to address the unemployment situation of many young people. The externalisation of the labour policy is likely to increase opportunities for the youth to work in other countries.

“We are appealing to the Government to ensure that thorough research is conducted to enable many young people opportunities to scoop gainful jobs in those countries with the demand for labour”, he adds.

Mukwaya recounts that in 2002, when the Government piloted a three-year programme meant to address the unemployment situation of fresh young university graduates, it benefited 4,000 youth.

Unfortunately, the programme was not renewed because the government wants to consolidate all micro-finance services in the country under the micro-finance centre. The centre is being run under the Finance ministry. It is in charge of regulating and monitoring micro finance services of the government.

But he regrets that the centre has not benefited the youth because they are not its priority.

“We need a programme which is specifically designed taking into consideration the diverse needs of young people,” he suggests. The centre is meant to cater for all marginalised groups and a larger percentage of its focus has tended to be the women because they are regarded as the most vulnerable group,” he says.

While appreciating that the government programmes for empowering the youth are good, Hannington Burunde, Communications officer for the Population Secretariat recommends that more and deliberate efforts be put towards improving the marketability of young people as the country’s human resource.

He says the current education, which the youth is receiving, is not giving the skills to turn them as job creators, a crucial stage in poverty alleviation.

“The current craze where young people who have not achieved university education are seen as less capable of doing the jobs, is because we have created it through the education we give them and it is not helping the youth,” he says.

Burunde says if the education system does not change the current trend, even the proposed Post-Primary Universal Education is not likely to solve the unemployment and poverty situation of young people.