The Principal Secretary for Youth Affairs Fikirini Jacobs
speaking at the Garissa University.Young people have been urged to embrace Technical Vocational Education and Training as a viable path to employment and self-reliance.
Youth Affairs PS Fikirini Jacobs said that with technical education, it is possible to create jobs for millions of Kenyans graduating every year.
He spoke on Saturday during the closure of the two-day Garissa Youth Summit at the Garissa University.
Despite the National and county governments investing heavily in technical training institutes in the Northeastern region, enrolment numbers remain very low.
This has been blamed on the community mindset on technical skills, where the majority still prefer university education. Efforts by leaders to call for a mind shift among the residents have not yielded fruit.
“There has been social wiring that university education is more important, but with dwindling employment opportunities for white-collar jobs, it is time we embraced technical skills whose job market is readily available,” the PS said.
Garissa Township MP
Dekow Mohamed speaking at the event.He said for far too long, a lot of attention has been given to university education, which is “managerial”.
“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 a socialisation problem in this country, “Jacobs said.
“We have approximately 1.6 million graduates into the job market every year. These graduates deserve opportunities to be employed but for those opportunities to come, we need a system that will create the demand for absorption of this population and the only way we can create demand is through technical education.”
He said the government is very deliberate in empowering technical and vocational education, the reason why the President created a fully-fledged state department for Tvets.
Jacobs
said is committed to empowering young people with special programmes such as
the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (Nyota) project, Jitume
programme and the Climate Workxs programme.
Garissa Township MP Dekow
Mohamed urged the youth to enroll in different technical and vocational
colleges.
Dekow
urged them to to start focusing on innovations, digital start –ups and embrace
Artificial Intelligence.
“We have encouraged our young
people in Garissa county to embrace technical skills from the local technical
colleges so that they can be ready to be absorbed into the industry. We want to
shift from white collar jobs to skills-based training,” he said.
“We
have about eight million young Kenyans who went to school for 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.”
