By Malek Arol Dhieu
“Be job creators, and not job seekers”, is a revision to youth 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 the energy to run that business well.
Jobs that youth can afford to create are phone charging centres 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 it is an ‘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 youth should open to be ‘job creators’ is the demolition of symbiotic shops attached to concreted shops. This has disarmed thousands of youth of job-creating opportunities and returned them to job seeking. A fraction of educated youth 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, do not seek for them. To me, the lyrics are untenable.
The only abused phrases by leaders are “be job creators and not job seekers”, and “leaders of tomorrow”. How dare youth be job creators when leaders have not fixed the country’s economy or prioritized agriculture practically? How dare can youth be leaders of tomorrow when their tomorrow comes and leaders mention another tomorrow?
When youth 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 youth of their quest for calling for regime change.
What miracle can youth perform to create jobs for themselves? How did leaders create their jobs when they were youth? To bury ‘job seeking’ for good, the government as a huge employer should re-prioritize agriculture, not verbally, but practically to give youth more job opportunities, and augment industries to quieten another fraction of youth from job seeking. To bury ‘job seeking’ much deeper, a pension bill should be debated and passed by the August House to allow retirees to give room for job seekers.
Not only that, security and road infrastructure need to be maintained in all the States and Administrative Areas so that youth 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 way with the products, job seekers find it useless to die rather than to seek jobs in Juba, period!
Thank you for reading “Sowing The Seed Of Truth.