EDITORIAL (Halbeeg News) – Despite the increasing number of graduates and the high rate unemployment in the Horn of Africa nation, the employers are expressing concern over lack qualified and competent contenders to fill the vacant positions.
A move which created confusion in a country rising from ashes following over two decades of civil war. This concern is not common in other parts of the world. The employers generally expect to get the right person for any position at advertised.
But what if the graduates have no skills to fill the post. There are factors influencing this problem including the education and employment systems in the country.
In accordance with the country’s constitution, Somali is the national language of the Horn of Africa nation, necessitating the language to be official working language in both companies, government departments, organizations whether local or international. The language should also be official language of education as well as researches.
Somali script was introduced in 1972. However, the then central government led by Siyad Barre, which introduced the language as national language collapsed in 1990 before their efforts to standardize the language turned twenty years.
But the language which was undergoing construction and deep structure (D-structure) remains still the official language.
After the collapse of the central government, while considering the immaturity of Somali language script, the education stakeholders opted the education languages to be foreign languages including Arabic and English, which are widely used in schools currently.
These contradictory issues including the so called national language and education foreign languages have shade light on weaknesses of the education system.
For instance, by the time the first product (graduates) of foreign languages was came into existence and taken over the leadership of learning institutions with poor condition of understanding these education languages. Subsequently the first generation of foreign curriculum taught the second generation in poor state of languages thus producing graduates equipped with no skills to work.
Hiring foreigners
Employers are decrying lack of qualified personnel to work at their companies and organizations amid high graduate numbers in the country.
However, where does the problems lies if the job providers claim that they are unable get personnel and the youth unemployment is increasing rapidly day after day.
Experts say this has been caused by the education system of the country. According to these experts, the learning institutions generate job seekers with not skills.
In additional, there is lack of institutions which offers professional marketable skills to students, leaving the companies and organizations with no human resources.
As the number of qualified personnel in the country is minimal, the number of imported foreign personnel increase rapidly.
Some of macro companies in Mogadishu claim that they advertised number of positions at their companies at different times, but failed to secure right national individuals suitable for the posts.
Despite lack of white color jobs and their qualifications in the country, there are other casual and blue-collar jobs needed to be done in the country, but youth do hardly include these in their job categories. Among them are waitering, cleaning, customer care, among others.
For instance, some of these jobs need training but both job providers and seekers do not give these of jobs consideration. Because hoteliers employ untrained individuals while some of Somali youth consider doing these jobs as shame by having stereotype.
Solution for unemployment
As for now, English is becoming the official working language of the country, and this language is used in many government offices despite Somali language being the national language.
Somali government recently issued a new Somali curriculum for primary school pupils, but this was ideally opposed by many analysts who claim that government is trying to teach pupils a language which will not be used in universities or job markets.
Therefore, to get sustainable solution for the increasing unemployment and the concern by the job providers, the government should review the education and employment policies.
The learning institutions should also carry out their own research on the obstacles affecting their alumni during job seeking, so that solution is reached.
As there is concern over quality of education in the country, the government is needed to review this and give it enough consideration.
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