IS YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT LEVEL IN OUR NATION A TICKING TIME BOMB?

IS YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT LEVEL IN OUR NATION A TICKING TIME

            BOMB?

 “They came after the Jews, and I was not a Jew, so, I did not protest. They came after the trade unionists, and I was not a trade unionist, so, I did not protest. Then they came after the Roman Catholics, and I was not a Roman Catholic, so, I did not protest. Then they came after me, and there was no one left to protest.” Pastor Nemoellor coming out of the Nazi death camps.

The lesson history teaches all of us is: If you believe you are safe, then you are at risk. If you do not see this killer stalking you, look again. There is no family or community, no race or religion, no place in Kenya safe to run to once the bomb explodes. We either genuinely embrace this message, a message of challenge, or we are a nation at risk.

Unemployment is the big burden on the lives of youths most of them trapped in slums and in the informal sector, hardly making ends meet and with the high political energy skyrocketing in Kibra as they await the by-election highly influenced by tribal affiliations and not their future one wonders do the public ever sit down on their own to decide what is fit for them. In the context of an election, I want to appeal to the voters to recognize that poverty is not a political creature. It does not care whether you are Jubilee or NASA; it does not ask whether you are tribe this or tribe that, male or female, young or old, when it starts to bite, then it bites.

With the young people accounting for the largest population in our country and a whopping 67 percent of the country’s unemployed workforce, with more and more poor decision continuing to be made every waking day, you can almost hear that bomb explosion next to your wallet. This may no longer be a distant threat but a present danger and we have helped it along with our silence. We may take refuge in our stereotypes, but we cannot hide there long, we must lift our shroud of silence.