GAINFUL EMPLOYMENT, A FAIRY TALE FOR MOST YOUNG GRADUATES IN CAMEROON
Thousands of young Cameroonians are released into the job market yearly. Most of this young graduates find it difficult to integrate into the job market because they lack the right talent, skill and experience required by the few jobs available. Most employers feel that the educational programs are not tailored to suit the job needs. As a human resource practitioner, I feel higher institutions of learning as well as state universities should go closer to enterprise owners and negotiate why not even pay enterprises to train their students so that at graduation they’ll be fully equipped to face the job market and the challenges involved.
Most of these
young stars tend to be frustrated because they feel they have no one to ‘hold their hand’ its gradually appearing
like a norm for 85% to 90% of an enterprise staff to be made up of relations or
friends of the CEO or connected to somebody
who knows somebody. This is so paradoxical because most people who hold top
managerial positions weren’t trained for such positions but are expected to
yield optimum results. What’s the fate of those without such connections?
Scramble to be noticed in the remaining 10% to 15% of vacancies? Even the
public service is worst. Imagine I met a student who applied for an academic
internship in an urban council and she was asked to give the name of the ‘big personality’ standing for her?
Some of these young graduates were trained as accountants, enterprise managers, corporate marketers, lawyers etc. but they end up as cleaners, cooks, porters, bike riders and so on in a bit to meet their daily needs
On the part of the young graduates I feel a bang wagon of them don’t even know what they want in life. Most of them choose a training course not because it’s necessary for them but because they see their peers doing same, they haven’t discovered purpose and they lack orientation on how to go about choosing the right course to be trained on. I strongly advice all students embarking on undergraduate or post graduate studies to meet counselors for proper orientation. Parents and guardians should also take up their responsibilities to direct these young stars.
Loise KHAN
Human Resource Practitioner
This is a very relevant topic in a country where the overall unemployment rate in 2021 was 3.9% according to the ILO, or 6.6% for young people aged 15 to 24 according to the World Bank. Why are the unemployment figures so low in Cameroon? In France it would be 7.3% in 2021 according to INSEE. Would Cameroon be a better student in terms of job creation than France? Especially since a study shows that in 2011, the unemployment rate was 23.8% for young people aged 17 to 35 years with a strong disparity between men and women (EESI, 2011). Several questions arise: what is unemployment? and what techniques are used to count the unemployed?
RépondreSupprimerA second point to note is that of poverty. In Cameroon, the poverty rate is nearly 40%, with 25.7% of the population in extreme poverty. This level of poverty could be partly explained by the minimum wage in Cameroon, which remains very low despite its increase. It is said to be around 40,000 CFA francs (or 60€ or 80$ or 2.66$ per day). What can you do with this amount of money in a country where the cost of living is more and more expensive; from the cost of rent, to nutrition, not to mention health, transportation, children's education if you have any, etc.
A third point I would like to raise is public policy for job creation. According to the study Politiques publiques et emploi des jeunes : une étude empirique du cas Camerounais by AVOM Désiré and NGUEKENG Bernard, the Cameroonian state has put in place mechanisms to promote youth employment for decades. In particular, we can cite the massive recruitment campaign of public agents. The authors specify in their study that many mechanisms to support youth self-entrepreneurship have also been put in place by the Cameroonian State since the 1990s. But what are these mechanisms? Who is in charge of informing and accompanying young people in the mobilization of these mechanisms? What are their results?
Finally, I would like to talk about the abuse of employers. My little sister has been working for almost a year in a newly created company in the city of Bertoua. For a year, she has been working without pay with the hope that one day she will finally be hired for an open-ended contract as promised when she was "hired". Who in the Cameroonian government controls the respect of workers' rights and that abuses like these are no longer a reality? Why do Cameroonian workers accept such exploitation? What recourse can they take to obtain justice? I hope that my little sister will have the courage to share her experience and her many experiences in the search for work, as an employee and also as a self-employed person.
Hi, these are all very good questions you raised. Answering these questions, I would say, requires a research paper in and of itself.
RépondreSupprimerYou make it very clear that there is still a distinction between the numbers of the workforce and the actual situation. Where unemployment is seemingly low on paper but poverty is still extremely high.
I hope we can find some clear answers to this, to put into action.
Good looking out!