New ILO boss to focus on youth employment in Malawi
The new International Labour Organisation (ILO) country director responsible for Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia has says Youth Employment will be his one of the priority areas of focus for Malawi.
Alexio Mushindo the new ILO director for the three countries, currently in Malawi for talks with number of partners and Government officials has been introduced at a press conference in Lilongwe jointly held with the Minister of Labour and Manpower development Hon. Henry Mussa.
“As an organization, we have priorities to take care. Just looking at the situation in Malawi so far from my readings which is similar to number of African countries, I will put the priority around youth employment. Employment in general that has a special focus on young people” said Mushindo
He explained; “We all know that young people are both potential for increased productivity as they participate in economic development, at the same time, once their incomes are increased there is increased opportunities for them to consume and invest. Again contribute further to economic growth.”
Mushindo then assured “Youth Employment is something that we will support and we will pursue as organization”
However, Mushindo said the first state of priorities that he is focusing on, are driven by discussions that he is holding during the course of this week and the discussions that he already had with Labour minister.
He said from such discussions ILO wants to know the needs from its partners and then align them with ILO thematic areas and establish priority areas that it needs to focus on.
Mushindo indicated that ILO will further encourage Social Dialogue between partners for a better working environment noting that unresolved labour disputes are detrimental to a country’s productivity and the economic performance.
He also mentioned that Social Protection and Social Security is another priority for ILO in Malawi. This he said follows discussions he had in Geneva with Malawi’s Labour Minister who asked ILO to increase its focus on addressing the challenges on informal economy.
The new ILO country director emphasized that the organization will be looking at gender aspects in all the priorities of addressing youth employment, social protection, dialogue and needs.
In Malawi ILO is among others; supporting Government in areas of HIV/AIDS by working with people affected and infected by HIV/AIDS through economic empowerment, elimination of Child Labour in Tobacco growing areas and ensure that children have access to education and skills for employability as well as promotion of employment creation.
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A very important priority indeed. BUT without a political CHOICE and not political WILL, I bet you nothing will continue to happen. First things first. TALK about Decent Youth Employment. The ILO Boss will not grasp a good picture of deep underlying factors perpetuating youth unemployment in Malawi he refrains from listening to people who have failed the youth over the years. One of the many factors is adultism i.e prejudice and accompanying systematic discrimination against young people. These behaviors and attitudes are based on the assumptions that adults are better than young people, and entitled to act upon young… Read more »
Another key partner is Ministry of Youth and Sports Development and National Youth Council of Malawi. There’s need therefore to deliberately involve them in all this.