More than 2,000 youth from Mombasa county will have access to employment and skills training in a new initiative.
The initiative dubbed ‘Mombasa Yetu Programme’ unveiled on Thursday by Mombasa Governor Abdulswamad Nassir and other elected leaders from the county will see the youth work on cleanliness and beautification, safety and traffic flow.
The youths will also be offered a chance to work and have experience in the tourism sector within the county.
“These youth will also work around our beaches to enforce compliance of the rules set by authorities to ensure that we do not have safety breaches around our beaches,” Nassir said.
“Those recruited into this program will be paid weekly. As the governor, I will make sure the workers are treated decently with their payments done on time,” he added.
According to the World Bank, young make up 37 percent of the working-age population in Africa, but 60 percent of the unemployed.
The WB further notes that young people are more likely to work longer hours under insecure work arrangements, characterized by low productivity and meager earnings.
Females face particularly strong challenges in entering the labor force, due to early motherhood and lack of education, it states.
The 2020 census data showed that 5,341,182 or 38.9 percent of the 13,777,600 young Kenyans are jobless, further widening the gulf between the rich and the poor.
The US Bureau of Labour Statistics defines the unemployed as people who do not have a job and have actively been looking for employment in the past four weeks.
