Jobless youth do not need permanent, pensionable jobs – CS Owalo
By Mary Ouko, July 6, 2023
ICT Cabinet Secretary (CS) Eliud Owalo has said Kenyans do not need permanent and pensionable jobs.
Speaking during Citizen TV’s JKLive show on Wednesday, July 5, 2023, the outspoken CS claimed that it was insensible for one to seek permanent and pensionable employment when they can be taking up more than one job.
According to the CS, the nascent Kenya Kwanza government had already outlined the necessary plans for unemployed youths to acquire non-permanent jobs. This, according to him, will enable the youths to have multiple streams of income by working for three different entities in a day.
“Believe me it does not make sense in this era of technology for somebody to want to be on employment which is permanent and pensionable. You don’t need to work for one individual,” Owalo stated.
“You can be working for one entity in the morning in the evening you are doing your own thing, that type of thing; A gig economy,” he added.
Owalo also assured Kenyans that the President William Ruto-led administration was looking forward to creating over a million jobs by establishing a digital laboratory across the country.
“We will be reaching out to global companies so that we match the youths with jobs that are available in the digital space. We will be able to create about one million jobs every year, in each and every constituency within one digital lab we can create 300 jobs…we will have residences in the village working for American companies or any company in other first-class economies,” he stated.
Laboured to answer if the plans were a pipe dream, the CS stressed that the operation was already ongoing and referred to a youth in Kabete who had already earned Ksh200,000 from a digital lab launched in the area.
“Its not a pipe dream its a reality, when the first digital laboratory was launched by the President at Kabete TVET, one of the boys there who was just six months old in that space told us it was too good to believe that he was earning around Ksh200,000 in that digital space,” he added.