NAN-H-76
By Chinyere Bassey
Job
Lagos, Nov. 14, 2016 (NAN) A youth activist, Mr Babatunde Iyori, has said that the government should collaborate with all the sectors to prioritise job creation as a way of investing in the youth.
Iyori, a member of the National Union of Lottery Agents Employees, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Monday that such intervention would overcome youth-specific disadvantages through skills and labour market policies.
Reacting to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) statement on youth employment, he said that such collaborative interventions should promote job growth, skills development, self-employment, better working conditions, social protection and rights at work.
The ILO had said in a statement on Monday that the number of youths being employed was reducing as many preferred to remain in school.
It said that globally, most youths waited for an average of 19 months to find a stable or satisfactory job, which reflected a difficult transition from education into work, carrying risks of skills deterioration and discouragement.
It said that young persons lost out on valuable skills and that the economy forfeited higher productivity while many lived in poverty.
“Early school leaving goes hand in hand with poverty. More youths seem to prefer staying in school to getting a job early in life.
“More than 200 million young people are either unemployed or have a job but live in poverty.
“Irrespective of mild recovery in recent years, youth unemployment has remained above its pre-crisis levels and is expected to rise again,’’ it said.
The labour organisation said that with more young people in school, fewer youths are working or looking for a job and youth labour pool was shrinking.
It said that the trends vary depending on gender, income levels and education enrolment.
The ILO said that more than one-third of working youths in developing economies lived on less than 3.10 dollars a day, three in four young workers in low-income countries had an “irregular” job while nine in 10 worked in the informal economy. (NAN)
CHIN/IKU/MVO
(Edited by Tayo Ikujuni/Mbadiwe Okwor)