UNTOLD STORIES OF UNEMPLOYMENT

MBABANE – After completing tertiary education, nearly everyone aspires to get employed, but others have been waiting for over 20 years for this opportunity.

These are some of the poignant stories that were shared by some of the unemployed people, who were interviewed by this reporter. Eswatini is among the countries whose unemployment rate remains relatively high, as it increased by 2.1 per cent from 33.3 per cent to 35.4 per cent in 2023.

Graduates

This is according to the Integrated Labour Force Survey 2023, which was officially released by the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Phila Buthelezi, early this year. In an interview with this publication, some of the graduates disclosed that they had reached middle age. In contrast, others are now 50 years old, which is a difficult time to prove to hiring managers that they could do more of the things that are important to the employer. Sleeping with depression and waking up with sadness and feeling useless is a common factor among most of those who are unemployed. There are currently 793 614 people of working age in the country but those who are employed are about 260 356.

Unemployment

Swaziland Unemployed People’s Movement’s (SUPMO) Lucky Dlamini said Eswatini is the fourth country with the highest unemployment rate in the world. This, he said, was a catastrophe, considering the size of the population of 1.2 million. Dlamini said SUPMO has always been advocating for the country to look deeply into its policies and amend them to address urgently the huge unemployment rate. He said there was a need to quickly resolve the economic crisis and inequalities by having a political will to create a redistribution of the economic programme. Furthermore, he said there were about 63 per cent of people who were living below the poverty line. Such, he said, was a bad situation with devastating effects. 

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