Date Of Article: 6/6/2002
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Creating jobs not govt’s job alone
By: Our Reporter
The pledge made by the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation yesterday that it will recruit 426 Bunda College of Agriculture graduates this year should give great relief in a country where unemployment is fast taking root. It is even sweeter news to this year’s 106 graduating students who are assured of automatic jobs in the ministry. We hail the ministry for creating jobs at a time many organisations are thinking of streamlining or outright retrenching staff due to the country’s economic malaise. While Principal Secretary Andrina Mchiela made the assurance that her ministry will recruit the 426 graduates from the agriculture college during the 2002 Bachelor of Science in Agriculture recruitment seminar in Lilongwe, we would also like to draw the attention of the students, graduates and other job-seekers to what Agriculture Minister Aleke Banda said during the same seminar — that employment should not always be the ultimate goal. More often than not we have heard unemployed university graduates complain that government is not doing enough to create jobs. That may have been true for other sectors, but we hope that will now be a thing of the past — at least in the agriculture sector — with the introduction of a curriculum aimed at training Bunda College students on how to go into self-employment. We cannot agree more with the agriculture minister that our graduates should not always be looking for employment, but rather strive to be employment providers. To borrow Banda’s own words, “when these graduates employ themselves they will also give chances to others to find employment”. So why not go into self employment and be an employer?
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