Malawi community colleges to reduce hunt for jobs – Minister

The introduction of community technical colleges will help to reduce unemployment rate and create wealth for the country, the Minister of Labour, Henry Mussa said on Thursday.

Mussa, briefing the press in Lilongwe, also revealed that government would officially launch the community technical college programme next Friday at Ngala in Karonga.

Mussa said the main reason why Malawi continued to register high rates of unemployment was because many people were being trained for white-collar than blue-collar jobs.

This, he said, had made people to be inactive and less creative, hence government’s intention to have community technical colleges in almost all districts.

Mussa said: “I wish to inform Malawians that President Prof. Peter Mutharika will on Friday next week officially launch the community technical college programme.

“This is one of the most important initiatives that will help in equipping our youth with various skills and also making them economically independent.

“Once fully established, the colleges will graduate about 28,000 artisans who will be fully independent, thereby reducing the number of the unemployed in the country.”

Apart from enrolling Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE) graduates, the colleges will also take onboard people with different artisan skills and empower them with entrepreneurship knowledge so that they become economically independent and play a leading role in improving the social economic status of the country.

Mussa said that government was also in the process of establishing a Development Bank that would provide loans to fresh graduates from technical colleges to enable them to start small businesses.

“We don’t want these people to start looking for jobs once they graduate,” he said. “We want them to stand on their own and as one way of making sure that this purpose is achieved, government will set aside money in the development bank for that course.”

Every year, about 11,000 students graduate from the country’s universities while about 50,000 finish MSCE level. The numbers are more than the job market can absorb.

Currently, about two million people are jobless, a development that Mussa said was worrisome.

Mussa expressed the hope that once fully utilized, the technical colleges would help to create jobs and at the same time reduce the country’s poverty levels.

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