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Momodou
Denmark
11684 Posts |
 Posted - 29 Oct 2007 : 14:41:41
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Foroyaa Editorial
The Youth and the Future
From the Frying Pan into the Fire Forever? No!
The Gambian youth constitutes 60 per cent of the population. 44 per cent of the population are considered to be under 15 years old. What is the future of the youth under the APRC regime is a matter of concern.
Our primary schools absorb about 185,000 children, Our Upper Basic schools absorb bout 67,000 children, while our Senior Secondary Schools absorb about 27,000 children. Within a period of 12 years the school system releases almost three hundred thousand young people into the job market in The Gambia. The public sector is already over saturated. It is estimated to employ less than 16,000 employees. It is also claimed that it employs more people than the private sector. In fact retrenchment is already taking place and Foroyaa will give a comprehensive report on the current overhauling of the agricultural sector and the number of people who will ultimately be among those retrenched.
Now Foroyaa would like to ask the adult population whose ranks are constantly shrinking because of low life expectancy: How are these 300,000 young people going to survive if the current productive base of the economy remains the same?
The government claims that its focus is on the youth. However the subvention to the National Youth Service Scheme amounts to only 4.1 million dalasis. Only D800,000 serve as a Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund. The rest is meant for salaries, allowances, utilities and other costs of sustaining the programme. The National Youth Council receives a subvention of D738,000. Only 50,000 is designated for Youth Assistance Training.
All these subventions are part of the budget of the Department of Youth, Sports and Culture which stands at 14.5 million dalasis. D2 million of this is supposed to be a contribution to finance a National Enterprise Development Initiative. Foroyaa will follow developments to show you how many young people benefited from these schemes against the number of young people in need of productive engagement to better their lives. Instead of providing avenues for them to have a future, conferences are being held in the name of saving them from themselves as they take dangerous trips into the arms of blind destiny.
They fail to empathise with the youth. They fail to recognise that the situation of the youth is the case of our proverbial frog which jumps from the frying pan into the fire. Telling them to stay in the frying pan is not the solution. It is just another bad option.
The real challenge is how to transform the country from being a frying pan so that the young people will not try to jump from it into the fire of illegal migration. Foroyaa holds that both the past and present regimes have failed to build a Gambia that has the productive base to absorb the creative energies of its young. The Gambian people however are sovereign. They have the capacity to take charge of their destiny. The youth should not continue to accept to be victims of blind destiny. The Gambia does not have to be a frying pan. The youth do not have to be frogs without options.
What they need to do is to learn from the failures of the past and the present to be able to shape the future. The youths must become critical minded. They must demand options from those who aim to be their policy makers. They must know the policies political leaders have to address the problems of the young. They must interrogate these policy options to develop a mature view of what is fact or fiction, what would end up as empty promises and what is practicable and realisable. It is no longer safe for the youth to have blind trust in leaders or worship personalities.
This is the era of the sovereignty of the people. Each Gambian must seek to assert his or her independent sovereign right by developing the maturity which enables them to listen to all views and discern what can lead to the consolidation of liberty and prosperity and by extension enhance his or her personal liberty and prosperity. The future belongs to the youth if we dare to take charge of our destiny. The future will be lost if we follow leaders without thinking what they can offer us to end our suffering.
Source: Foroyaa Newspaper Burning Issue
Issue No. 127/2007, 29 – 30 October
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