50% Ugandan youth in risky work - study

By John Agaba

KAMPALA - A new report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reveals more disturbing trends about youth employment in Uganda, with over 50% respondents admitting to working under risky conditions.

Presenting the report at the Kampala Sheraton Hotel, Sara Elder, the chief technical advisor Work4Youth Project at ILO, said a lot of youth are involved in “irregular jobs”

“But they don’t have an alternative,” she said.

“They are in agriculture, in stone quarrying, in mining, fishing. You find girls operating bars as maids – and most of them are vulnerable.”

The report, carried out in 2013 to determine the school-to-work transition among youth (aged 15 to 29) in Uganda, highlights major gaps in Uganda’s school curriculum and the government’s failure to draw tangible unemployment solutions, as partly the reason for these “unfriendly working conditions.”

It draws a mismatch between Uganda’s education system and one’s employability.

It shows that 30% of Ugandan young men and women are in school; 10% not in school and unemployed; and another 10% in “what you can call decent employment.”

‘Misdirected’

The report places the national unemployment levels at 5%.

“It shows majority of Ugandans are employed. But, what is the kind of work are they involved in? Many of them don’t earn a dollar a day,” underlined Stanley Kaggwa, the National Organisation of Trade Vice Chairman General.
 

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Ugandan educationist Fagil Mandy said many youth are involved in inadequate jobs because they lack the generic skills to be employed.

“It is largely because of our education system. It is misdirected. Children start Primary One when they are very vibrant. But, by the time they are in Senior Two they have shrunk. They can’t think. They can’t reason. And by the time they are completing university, they are gone,” Mandy said.

He added: “We need to reverse this. And to relate what we teach to the outside world to produce competent graduates.”

Emorut Okumu, from the National Curriculum Development Centre, said that the body has developed a new inclusive and practical curriculum for the Ordinary Level. The new curriculum is hoped to address all these challenges of irrelevant education.

“Even when we have UPE and USE [free education for primary and secondary level], we have pupils who continue to drop out of school,” said Okumu.

“We have developed a new curriculum that is practical and it will help learners develop things. If in Chemistry learners study preparing salt in the laboratory then they should be able to produce salt at the end of the course. This is where we need to examine them.”

It is understood the new curriculum would start in 2017.

Rosemary Ssenabulya – from the Federation of Uganda Employers – expressed need for the government to add vigor into the Skilling Uganda initiative to solve some of these challenges.

“The government needs to strengthen its labour laws so that domestic workers are protected and can have access to medical care,” said Elder.