Garissa: The government has called on the young people in the country to embrace technical education and take advantage of the many employment and income-generating opportunities in the sector. Youth Affairs Principal Secretary (PS), Fikirini Jacobs, speaking during the closing ceremony of a two-day Garissa Youth Summit at the Garissa University, argued that there has been social wiring that university education is more important, but with the current dwindling employment opportunities for white-collar jobs, it was time for the youth to embrace technical skills, whose job market remains readily available.
According to Kenya News Agency, Fikirini said that with technical education, it is now possible to create demand in the job market for millions of Kenyans, who are graduating every other year. 'As one of the young guys who have gotten opportunities to serve at this stage of my life, I want to request the young people of this country to embrace technical education. I know we have had a problem of socialisation as a country. We have given a lot of attention for far too long to university education, which looks 'managerial' and given a lot of emphasis to jobs that are considered white-collar or jobs which are cool in the eyes of the young people,' he said.
'However, I think technical education is equally something we need to embrace. We have approximately 1.6 million graduates enter the job market every year. These graduates deserve opportunities to be employed, but for those chances to come, we need a system that will create the demand for the absorption of this population and the only way we can create demand is through technical education,' Fikirini added.
At the same time, the PS reiterated that the government is committed to empowering the young people with special programmes such as the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (NYOTA), the Jitume programme and the Climate Worxs among others and called on the youth to apply. 'The government is very deliberate in empowering technical and vocational education. We have a fully-fledged state department for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). We have institutions that have collaborated with TVET through ICT and the digital economy to create the Jitume programme so that young people can get opportunities,' he said.
Garissa Township MP Major (Rtd.) Dekow Mohamed echoed similar sentiments and called on the youth in Garissa to enrol in different technical and vocational colleges within the county to acquire both skills and certification. Dekow further called on the young Kenyans to start focusing on the innovations and digital start-ups and dive into Artificial Intelligence skills, where the next job markets will be focused. 'We have encouraged our young people in Garissa County to embrace technical skills from the local technical colleges so that they can be ready for absorption into the industry. We want to shift from white-collar jobs to skill-based training,' the MP said.
'We have about eight million young Kenyans, who went to school at various levels and are not able to get meaningful employment. This is because our young people are not exposed; they are not advised on what careers to pursue,' he added.