Gov’t turns to hands-on skills to curb joblessness

As a way of creating more jobs for the population, mainly the youth, government has embarked on a plan to encourage establishment of craft centres in all districts. Speaking to The New Times, Minister of Public Service and Labour, Anastase Murekezi said that as the population increases, it is vital that more jobs are created even by the informal sector to address the problem of unemployment.“Poverty is reducing in the country because the population under the poverty line is now at 44% and we need more reduction...we need every district to have a craft production centre to help create employment especially for the youth.” Citing Gakinjiro Carpentry Centre, the minister noted that more centres were needed in all districts adding that government was ready to support the initiatives.Antoine Manzi, the Director of Trade advocacy at Private Sector Federation, said they have already started training some carpenters adding that they intend to provide more training to improve the quality of products.“We have now embarked on capacity building, last year we organised a study tour to Germany for some carpenters from Gakinjiro to learn more skills in wood work for the purpose of improving their work”, he said. He further noted that they intend to create five centres for skills development where more people from across the country will be trained in wood work, ICT, construction, Tourism, and Cosmetology.In an interview, Jean Claude Ntakirutimana, a carpenter at Gakinjiro centre welcomed the initiative, saying it would create more market for their businesses.Valence Ntiginama, ADARWA Carpenters Cooperative, pointed out that there was still the problem of scarcity of timber saying that government needed to look into the problem before encouraging establishment of the centres.“We are not allowed to cut timber in the forests here; we get it from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo which is expensive.”“Therefore I think it would be better for the government to have one centre that is well developed instead of creating more.”

National

Gov’t turns to hands-on skills to curb joblessness