The Youth to go for Ideologies not Governments...

Dear Editor,

The ‘1 billion-to-4-billion’ shilling youth fund has proved to be a big bureaucracy more intent on keeping itself revolving with interest and politically going than to help the umemployed youth. Certainly even as elections approach and sponsors readily target 60% youth votes, the seemingly ‘wasteful project’ would only divide and decimate desperate youths. It is strange and unrealistic for government to use the fund believing that it has already had a blanket solution for the youth using electoral miscalculations when it comes to numbers.
Government erred by imposing a ‘project’ on youths in the name of availing them a youth ministry and entrepreneurship, to help solve their problems.
 
Is the Jua Kali (informal) sector any better now and a success for the nation? May be what government is doing is to use the youth and the fund to compensate some of the failures of the informal sector by choosing to partner up with them.
Further said, as a ‘barrier’ than succces, the youth fund may have been used to subsidise the unpopular government owned informal entrepreneurship. Worse still the funding is being tied to concepts such as creating 500,000 job opportumities per year and that the government is concerned with the welfare of the youth, at least in theory.
 
The Kenyan youth needs genuine employment.Ironocally, government recommends entrepreneurship through the youth fund for jobless graduates such as teachers, doctors, engineers,nurses and many more.
Is it logical for majority of Kenyan youth to go into business and entrepreneurship even as they provide services more that trade in goods? Many wonder why government opted to re-fund the youth venture with a windfall of Ksh. 3 billion shillings more. Is the aim to further its political interests at this electioneering period? Is the fund political than moral, social and economic?
 
Certainly there had been claims that the fund was prone to nepotism and that it still does not favour the majority and those in need on the money for setting up businesses thus bypassing he goal of the fund.
The PS, Ministry of Youth Affairs, recently told the media that so far Ksh.600,000 has been disbursed to the youth. But was the government ‘experimenting’ with the fund by releasng in bits? And will the money from the fund be accounted for sufficiently or would it be a wasted venture come next year and after the elections?
 
To my mind the government chose to monopolise this venture by providing the fund, raw materials and other products and services at the same time regulating, marketing the end products and services for ots own good. Thus why own the fund, merchandise and prospects instead of deregulating part of this offer.
 
Or are the youth salespersons for businessmen linked to the fund and government? Where is the place and commercial comfort of te youth in all these? Isn’t it any fairer for government to politically empower the youth so that they can afford to pay taxes and contribute to economic development?
 
About 60% of the youth contribute to economic development. They have helped transform the country’s GDP rate stand at 7%. But is having a high-flying figure a parameter for real growth than to have a lower sustaining growth rate of lets say 4.5% that gives room for youth to prosper?
And has the youth fund injected any economic wherewithal that affects the GDP as the youth make themselves self-sufficient?
 
The youth strongly believe that the government through the Ministry of Youth Affairs has been lopsided on many issues that touch on them.Government has literally failed to address the real decision makers who understand best their challenges. It is thus upon the government to ethically step down and allow youthful leadership to help empower society in all ways.

The world over, age brings with it a shift toward the conservative and of the leadership spectrum.Historically it is argued that a rightward ideological shift in the populace is a direct function of age. The older conservatives perceive that broad, sweeping socio-political change willrpoduce more societal problems that it will help fix them. Shallow thinking, selfish interpretation and manipulation of ideologies only bring more conflict to society. Certainly change is brought about by ideologies that work much more than a generation that stagnates on political nostalgia and fame.

Regards,
Mundia Mundia Jnr.