By Malek Arol Dhieu
The only abused phrases by leaders are “be job creators and not job seekers”, and “leaders of tomorrow”. How dare can youths be job creators when leaders have not fixed the country’s economy or prioritized agriculture practically? How dare can youths be leaders of tomorrow when their tomorrow comes and leaders mention another tomorrow? Be job creators, and not job seekers is a revision to youths since the world is in the depth of creativity, but creating a job in South Sudan is easier said than done. On your table must be enough money to begin your job with, but saving this money makes you look like you were discharged from the hospital yesterday; too emaciated to have energy for running that business well. Jobs that youths can afford to create are charging kiosks and roadside small-scale businesses, but the actions of the very people who say ‘be job creators’ consume the growth of these businesses so much that the owners resume being ‘job seekers’. When a youth mistakes to open a charging kiosk today, the fluctuations of the electricity price and its ‘on and off’ habit will squeeze the neck of the kiosk, whereas the public and private taxation of the same kiosk will handcuff the kiosk and the deterioration of the economy will tie the legs of the kiosk, leading to its collapse. The taxation affects the kiosk because, as obvious as the fact that taxation is carried out at the end of the month, unprincipled officers return to tax kiosks in the middle of the month or whenever they have no airtime or bus fares. This is a very special form of taxation that leaders do not know. The meltdown of the economy affects these small-scale businesses in that losses exceed profits, and this destroys even large-scale businesses worldwide. The overall assassin of small-scale businesses in which youths should open to be ‘job creators’ is the demolition of symbiotic shops attached to concreted shops. This has disarmed thousand youths of job-creating opportunities and returned them to job seeking. A fraction of educated youths who write projects and take them to the very people who say ‘be job creators’ to get funded also share the same story with the kiosk owners, their projects are dumbed and the song sweetly goes on ‘be job creators, not job seekers, ‘be job creators and not job seekers’, create jobs, don’t seek them. To me, the lyrics are untunable. What miracle can youths perform to create jobs for themselves? How did leaders create their jobs when they were youths? To bury ‘job seeking’ for good, the government as a huge employer should re-prioritize agriculture, not verbally, but practically to give youths more job opportunities, and augment industries to quieten another fraction of youths from job seeking. To bury ‘job seeking’ much deeper, pension bill should be debated and passed by the August House to allow the retirees to give rooms for job seekers. Not only that, security and road infrastructure need to be maintained in all the States and Administrative Areas so that youths wanting to open small-scale businesses such as farms in the states can be able to cultivate with ease and transport their products to the city also with ease. But because of insecurity as people are killed in the farms and on their ways with the products, job seekers find it useless to die rather than to seek jobs in Juba, period! When youths who have created jobs are taken to radio stations now to give testimonies to the public, some of them may be muted by anger while others will admit they have uncles, who support them in the government, and the fact remains that not everybody has an uncle; others are struggling to be founding uncles. Officials often say ‘be job creators, and not job seekers’ in order to disarm youths of their quest for replacement.
The author is a medical student, University of Juba. He can be reached at malengaroldit@gmail.com or +211922332811.