Africa-Press – Lesotho. I hope this letter finds you well as you prepare to start work as the new prime minister of Lesotho. I would like to pass on good wishes to you on your new prominent position but I would also like to reserve my space for the reasons why I write to you today.
Allow me to begin my business today with this astute quote that goes: Every great leader knows how to change and adapt based on their situation, like a pitcher changing the pitch, they throw on the mound, or an executive modifying the go-to-market strategy for greater results.
But then again change is a process that takes time to get used to and even the greatest struggle to keep up with. But how can we all be ready for the change we want to see in our country when we have suffered this long? How can you as a new PM in office promise to change our situation as a country?
My biggest distress is however not really that. I am apprehensive mostly about the youth of this country. While convincing arguments have been made that certain levels of unemployment cannot be erased, it is a fact that high raising numbers of unemployed youth impose high costs on the individual, society and the country.
This situation can be interpreted in a variety of ways; it can be used to describe people with no jobs and people who work low-paying jobs that do not provide enough full-time hours for benefits or enough to earn a living wage.
We can also classify the latter under the underemployment radar. Unemployment results or lead to an erosion of skills and this in the long term robs the country’s economy of useful talents.
Job creation should be very much prioritised to avoid such and retirement age should be revisited and cut down a little to try to pave way for young fresh minds and talent to avoid greater scepticism and pessimism that may be caused by unemployment.
Unemployment is a big problem and it affects the economic growth of the country. Some of its effects include labour exploitation, political instability and loss of human resources amongst others.
Careful consideration of how, in the first 100 days in office, you are going to restructure ways to cater for the unemployed skilled youths of this country should be your number one priority.
Sport is a continuum and our sporting fraternity is very poor and needs some serious reformation. The sporting sector should, under your leadership as a man that is always ready to support young talent, be focused on as an economic activity.
Besides contributing to the economic growth of the country it will also help generate more jobs. This way you will be juggling two challenges all at once.
If your minister of sports would be kind enough to our dear athletes and make relations with the minister of sports in Germany, they will learn a lot from them on how they managed to create the largest number of sport related jobs while also helping nurture talent.
But then again we can’t succeed in all these without the construction of new professional sports policies which will pave way for athletics academies, which will nurture new fresh talent and old talent that has for years been suppressed by the poor mismanagement of the sports sector.
Efforts to improve sports systems must be treated with care so that the sector will develop its capabilities. Fraud and criminal activities are also making disturbing turns and a few weeks’ sentence and bail are not helping reduce such activities.
Some communities even resort to mob justice and we know that taking the law into one’s own hands always end bad no matter how ruthless they were affected because the law takes forever to help.
But putting in act the restorative justice approach will benefit all parties. Instead of serving some time in prison or paying bail, all the parties that would be involved must create a consensus for
what the perpetrator of the crime can do to repair the harm from the offence. This will help reduce unnecessary deaths that are often a result of reprisal, reduce mob justice acts and promote peace in communities and will help reduce crime activities in the country.
But all these again cannot be implemented with our kind of infrastructure. I hate to call it poor so I’ll say it’s underdeveloped. Infrastructure, both hard and soft, need to be revamped so that it can play its main role of encompassing services and facilities necessary for the economy of Lesotho.
We do not have enough roads. Even the ones that exist are badly damaged. Our bridges always collapse because they cannot endure heavy rains; they are not built strong enough.
Railways have become a terrain of pedestrian crossings in the industrial area and train carriages house the homeless helpless kids because the social development ministry cannot accommodate them all.
Our educational programmes have become shallow and out-dated and the education system is losing its value. Skills are a thing of yesterday, all the teachers mark is attendance and that will help the student move to the next grade. There are never any new developments in the country except for missing funds or reshuffling of ministers.
I cannot talk about the law enforcement agencies and not refer to them as centres of torment, manipulation, nuisance, ineptitude and not shed a tear when I remember how many lives we lost under their “come in for questioning” sessions.
Infrastructure in all its forms is the backbone of a healthy economy. Now it is all in your hands. As PM, like a pitcher in a field, change the pitch, put out your best team of players and assign them with tasks that will change our lives for the better.
This is the time we have been waiting for. We believe the grass will be greener under your leadership and we hope for great results. Yours sincerely, Bokang Masasa l Bokang Masasa writes in her personal capacity.
She says she is a very concerned citizen who believes in revolutionising states, industrialising departments for the betterment of the people and changing strategies that have never worked in favour of Basotho.
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