“The problem is made even more acute by the breakdown in family values, as well as the absence of fathers and the minimum wages some mothers have to get by with to ensure a livelihood for their families”
It’s another season when your children are preparing for common entrance exams; and parallel to that, the thousands who will be leaving school soon.
You as a parent hope the younger ones are successful with their exams and for those leaving school your hope is that they get employed soon.
On the other hand, you may have to fork out more money to ensure that the brightest get further education and that means putting yourself in more debt and hoping in the end everything works out positive.
The state, on the other hand, offers hope of a better tomorrow, but works at snail’s pace to create opportunities.
Meanwhile, the frustration of the young grows daily and they seek alternative survival means — and that is when they are influenced to try extreme methods to meet their needs.
In some cases some die in the process, some end up behind prison bars and some become notorious.
Such are the challenges of life.
What makes this problem even more acute is the breakdown in family values, as well as the absence of fathers and the minimum wages some mothers have to get by with to ensure a livelihood for their families.
The Haves ensure that they keep what is theirs, the affluent keep their social linkages and the struggling class is caught in the middle, living on hope and the promises of the government about the prosperity of tomorrow.
There are several projects constantly in the pipeline, grants and loans geared towards dealing with the issue of unemployment, but some of the government’s planning, projects and proposals end-up not being good enough to resolve the unemployment saga.
Thinking outside the box is rare, as is creating mass employment opportunity — yet the planners still do the same things and expect different results.
It is so sad when we bring children into the world, but leave them to fend for themselves, as we suppose our best efforts are all we can do.
The planners creep to accomplish one thing at a time, but fail to see that their little is not enough to help the masses.
The time it takes to achieve seems forever and in the meantime many fall through the cracks and the hopes we often want them to hold on to turn out to be false ones and broken dreams.
I wish that those in charge of our tomorrow, would study today why their efforts seldom bear fruit — and why we are always tagging along.