By Dr. Ahmed Adamu
More than 40% of the unemployed and underemployed in Nigeria
engage in small-skilled labour or what some termed as unskilled or hard labour,
and these people are potentially vulnerable to abuse, exploitation,
discriminations, and seldom used to perpetuate crimes. Heroes are also those
young people who reject the myth of their generation apathy, and endured all
the hardships to earn their living legally. Refusing to take shortcuts, and
remain contented with their little income. When I look at these brave young
people, I do not only see bricklayers, labourers, plumbers, electricians,
commercial motorcyclists, security guards, pushers of wheelbarrow, local toilet
plushers etc. what I see are nation builders, service providers, highly-skilled
labourers and movers of the economy. Some might consider them as unskilled or
semi-skilled labourers, but the nation will realise how inelastic their
services are, when these groups of small-skilled labourers organise themselves
and go for a month strike; then we will realise that we cannot build the houses
we live in, we can’t fix electric issues in our houses, we can’t push our loads
in the parks or market places, and we can’t do the hard labour in other
construction works. Then the whole country will stand still. That is the least
you can imagine how important these small-skilled labourers are.
Imagine a young man spending thirty years doing hard labour,
many times underpaid and exploited, and yet endured. This same young man will
build tenths of houses, offices and roads, and when he gets old and no longer
having the strength to do these jobs, he gets nothing to feed himself and his
family, and he will eventually resort to begging to sustain his life. His
greatest asset, his strength, is exhausted. Why can’t he receives pension
allowances in appreciation for his service to the nation? I think some of these
young men deserve better pension scheme and wage package than some of the
negligent government workers and politicians.
In some developed countries, small-skilled labourers earn high,
as their services are appreciated and recognised. For example, in UK, the wage
for every handyman is regulated and standardised according to locations; A
bricklayer gets around N100 per brick laid, and Handyman doing odd jobs gets
N5,600 per hour, gas heating boiler services for N16,800 etc. These are
regulated for London location, and therefore clients cannot cheat or exploit
their service providers, and vice versa. This also helps in predicting cost of
production. This are usually reviewed timely to accommodate market changes. By
regulating and standardising small-skilled jobs, unemployed young graduates
will then start estimating how much they would be losing for every one hour
lost doing nothing. They would then realise that, they only need a particular
skill to earn certain amount of money in one hour or per load of work/service.
This will attract young people to learn skills despite the chunks of their
educational certificates.
Therefore, regulating and standardising the wages for small
skilled labourers as well as creation of their unique health and pension scheme
will motivate young people to engage in skills acquisitions. These hard labour
or small-skilled jobs should be professionalised, someone who spent three years
working as a plumber or electrician should be considered as having a
professional work experience for three years. He can add that to his CV. They
should be encouraged to set up an organisation, which will register all members
engaged in these types of jobs. Their organisation will be protecting and
advocating for their interests, and will provide frequent trainings and ensure
improvement of quality of their work/services. Their organisation will receive
certain incentives to subsidise their work and to help reduce charge rate.
These incentives will be shared among its members. The government will set
requirements for every small-skilled workers association, which might include,
significance, charge rate, quality of work, decency of the workers, compliance
to standard and regulations etc.
If young people engaged in these small-skilled jobs are
recognised as professionals and receive attractive wages, the percentage of
youth unemployed will be reduced by at least 20%. Therefore, in an effort to
reduce unemployment and poverty, small-skilled labour should be
professionalised. Educational institutional curriculum should also provide wide
range of vocational and technical skills, so that young graduates may not have
to learn these skills after their education, they can automatically start
providing services immediately after their studies, and they do not have to
wait for government jobs.
Thank you
Ahmed Adamu
Economist
Economist
No comments:
Post a Comment