AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE Standing Parliamentary Constitution and Legal Affairs Committee has commended the government’s effort in empowering youth through the apprenticeship and internship training programme which is implemented by the Prime Minister’s Office (Policy, Parliamentary, Employment,-
-Youth and the Disabled).
Mohamed Mchengerwa, Chairman of the committee made the statement shortly after he received a report on implementation of the program from Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office (Policy, Parliamentary, Employment, Youth and the Disabled) Patrobas Katambi.
Mchengerwa said the programme has enabled a number of youth to participate in various economic activities, thus contributing to economic growth.
“The programme is crucial for our youth since it empowers them to be able to work as well as building skills and capacity. Some of the youth who participated in the programme have been able to employ their fellows, thus helping the government to reduce unemployment rate among young Tanzanians,” said the parliamentary committee chairman.
Earlier, Deputy Minister Katambi said the programme was introduced following agreements between the government and stakeholders through a special programme which is aimed at improving business environment whereas most employers insisted the need to develop more skilled youth.
“Implementation of the programme aimed at improving the skills among youth because most of them had limited skills and knowledge. We needed to have a good number of youth with the highest level of skills to be able to compete in the labour market within and outside the country,” said Katambi.
He said the labour force survey conducted in 2014 indicated that an estimated 79.9 percent of the country’s labour force had limited skills and knowledge (16.6 percent).
Findings of the survey pushed the government to consider including youth in various economic activities as well as enhancing their skills.
“We target to have many youth with the highest level of skills by 2025/2026. The nation’s workforce must be well knowledgeable to acquire jobs in different economic sectors,” he noted.
The Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Ally Msaki said the government decided to implement the five years programme (2015/2016 – 2019/2020) to empower youth with the needed skills in the labour market. He said the aims was also to enable them establish their own income generating activities.
According to Msaki, a total of 65,008 youth have benefitted with the programme in between 2016/2017 and 2019/2020.
