My neighbour
and a close family friend works as a branch manager for a Bank. A good job.
Lucrative even. It pays well. A salary of over One Hundred Thousand per month
can only be a dream come true for many people, if not all. To supplement her
already good income, she has a side hustle. She buys raw groundnuts (G-nuts)
from the market, fries them and then sells them in small packages each going
for Kshs 50. Most of her customers are the Bank employees who find her G-nuts a
perfect accompaniment during tea break.
“You have a
well-paying job. Why do you trouble yourself with this G-nuts business? It does
not even give you much, does it?” I asked her one evening when we were having
one of our regular fellowship time. We were discussing the importance of work
from a Biblical perspective. And should I mention that we were enjoying some
hot coffee with G-nuts? Her G-nuts?
She does not
get huge profits from her G-nuts business but at least she gets something
small. That is what she said. She continued to add that this time we are living
in, one cannot rely on one job only. There are just too many obligations to be
met. After tax and other deductions (NSSF, NHIF,PAYE, et cetera), one has to
pay rent. Pay electricity and water bills. Pay garbage collection fee. Take
care of one’s sibling’s school fees. Pay one’s children’s school fees. Pay
tithe. Send money home. Contribute towards Church Harambee, Contribute to
Chama. Pay back loans (Mortgage, car loan, M-shwari loan, KCB-Mshwari loan,
HELB loan, Chama loan, TALA loan, et cetera). Contribute towards a friend’s
wedding. Go to the salon. Stock a month’s supply of food. Take care of
transport for the whole month. Airtime. Internet Data. Service the car. Fuel.
Charity work. Send money home (again) towards development projects and many
more.
In short. It
is not enough. And that is why she has to work two jobs. It is true. Time is
nigh for youths to work two jobs to make ends meet. If we, youths, have to
break the financial ceiling, we have to think along working two jobs. Or else
we shall get stuck in single rooms and bed-sitters. We shall postpone getting
married. We shall forget about visiting our parents back at home. Nor send them
money. We shall continue to shun pregnancies we are responsible for. We shall
continue to hide from our debtors. We shall continue to wallow in depression.
We shall do drugs and get into criminal activities.
In
“successful” countries like America, working two jobs is the norm. It is not
their choice to burden themselves with two or more jobs. It is just the
direction the world is taking and the earlier we catch up the better. Tragedy
is that in a country like ours, majority of youths do not have even one job.
Official statistics from Kenya National Bureau of statistics (KNBS) March 2018
survey estimates that a whopping 7 Million Kenyans are unemployed.
If a person
earning more than Kshs 100,000 needs a side hustle to barely stay afloat in
this economy, how about a person earning less than Kshs 50,000? And how worse
can it get for someone who does not have a job?
How can someone who does not have a job survive in a system or economy
which runs on two jobs per individual? This is why the government needs to take
the issue of youth unemployed very seriously. If it were possible, all
government and non-governmental projects should be stopped and all energy and
resources directed towards creating jobs for the youths and/or supporting them
to start their own businesses. A government which truly cares for its future
should put the interest of its youths in the forefront and nothing else. No
other way around it.
(idle youths courtesy of www.nation.co.ke)
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