Centre for Community and Youth Development (CCYD), is a local organization working towards provision of an appropriate opportunity to enable the youth develop socially, economically, culturally and earn political skills to enhance their meaningful participation in the overall development process and improve their quality of life.
As a youth organization, CCYD would like to express its dismay over recent xenophobic attacks mated on foreign nationals living in South Africa, including some Malawian youths, which left seven Malawians killed, about 213 injured and 3460 repatriated to Malawi.
CCYD would therefore like to convey its heartfelt condolences to the families of those who lost their relatives during the attacks and sympathize with those who were injured during the incident.
This organization would like to commend the government of Malawi for taking a swift action in repatriating its nationals from South Africa using its resources, despite financial constraints the country is currently facing.
As a youth organization, CCYD has established that most of Malawians who were affected by the xenophobic attacks in South Africa were the youth who according to 2008 population and housing census form more than 40% of Malawian’s population.
The Malawi National Youth Policy which CCYD refers to, notes that Malawi youth are becoming increasingly vulnerable due to inadequate vocational training, homelessness, high unemployment rate, underemployment, sexual harassment, health related issues, teenage pregnancy, early marriages, crime and general youth deviance, marginalization, youth non-involvement in decision making, smoking, drug and alcohol abuse, among others.
CCYD believes that if such issues are not given a permanent cure, young Malawian professionals and non professionals will continue migrating to foreign countries, looking for greener pastures where they are subjected to harsh treatment such as xenophobia. In addition to that, migration of young Malawians who form more than 40 percent of the country’s population leads to the decline of the country’s valuable energetic human resource which could be used for the development and transformation of our nation.
Therefore as a youth organization, concerned with youth development we suggest that, the government should quickly identify solutions the problems youth of the country are currently facing. CCYD has also noted that both learned and unlearned youths of Malawi are facing similar problems which force them to migrate to other countries to seek what is usually degrading job opportunities. This problem can, ably be addressed if there is transparency and political will among our leaders.
Among the things that can be done to curb problems the youth of the country face, CCYD suggests that when recruiting people to occupy vacant positions in the public service there must be absolute transparency, and resistance to corrupt practices.
In addition to that CCYD suggests that the government of Malawi should reduce retirement age of people working in the civil service from the current 60 years to 50, to pave way for the qualified youth. CCYD also feels that despite financial ailments the country is sailing through the government should fill about 60,000 available vacancies in the civil service to provide the youth with job opportunities.
Finally CCYD would like to appeal to all Malawians especially the youth who intends to go back to South Africa, to hold such a thoughts at the moment and find some locally available opportunities. CCYD will therefore endeavour to engage the appropriate authorities to create conducive environment for the youth.
