Unemployment: Epidemic menaces the world [Archives:2005/855/Reportage]
Eshraq AL-Bodigi
[email protected]
For Yemen Times
There is one thing more dangerous than AIDS, more truculent than Cholera, and faster than SARS. It menaces the world and invades communities with an amazing speed and is the monster that destroys millions of people around the world.
Unemployment; the disease, which we cannot find get rid off on the level of Arabian and European communities, the disease which has been driving millions of youth away through all past, present and future years.
The similarities between unemployment and such ugly diseases like these may seem like an inequitable matter to some of you, but it is completely known that such diseases may kill people and communities or prey upon thousands and millions of them with or without warning; However, unemployment is the only pandemic, which we do not have a specific cure or time for it, and till now we still cannot find its end or its starting point.
In the course of time, this unemployment problem has appeared with the deterioration of national and international economic situations on a level of the industrial economic states and developing countries.
The thing which stimulates the astonishment, is that the employee who is having limited income or more does not always feel by the size of the disaster that the world has faced in this field. However, he is still very sure that he is better than others, who are jobless, and in comparison with unemployed people's conditions and their needs that they are not able to fulfill their families' necessities, they feel as if they are in enviable situation.
Unemployment is a social and economic problem, which is a real disaster and a painful tragedy for many people in the Arab and European societies. In fact, it is an endless tragedy with all negative results and bad tracks that has been left behind.
One who follows up this unemployment problem would be shocked at the frightful numbers that explain the size of the problem itself which call for wakefulness and determination to find suitable solutions even if it takes a long duration. Recent surveys and studies show that 88 million youth in the 15-24 age category are jobless; they represent 47% of 186 million people around the world who are unemployed in the year of 2003.
With talking to this important category of youth, you would never expect to find a more youthful, powerful, active, and more productivity youth at that age, whereas, the consideration of this category in a circle of unemployment and its bends forms a huge global economic depression.
Through those studies, we notice that unemployment is aggravated directly with the rate of population's growth and reversely with the economic situations of each society.
In spite the fact that unemployment threatens the Arabic societies more than the European countries, many industrial countries that have high economies witness increasing numbers of the unemployed people last years; such as, Germany, the third industrial economic country over the world, France, Japan, U.S.A, and China.
The official statistics in U.S.A indicates an increase that reached up to 9 million unemployed people in 2004. On the other hand, according to the numbers that are given by the Chinese ministry of employment and social insurances, China registered 37.8 millions people who are out of work in the urbanite areas in China at the end of January 2004.
At this point, we detect the participation of all developing and economic countries in the same trouble but we have perceived that the situation has become worse in communities that have less economic and industrial consciousness.
In the previous decade, the unemployment rates of youth jumped from 7-11 %, then to a record number that reached 41.4% in 2003 in more than 100 states. These one hundred countries have a youth category between 15-29 years old that reaches more than 40% of the total number of populace, among these states are Arab countries without any exception.
In the developing Arabic countries, unemployment is considered as equal as poverty, which reflects the neediness, hunger, illness, suffering, and beggary. Although there are negative outcomes of unemployment around the world, it is less painful for the unemployed citizens who live in the economic industrial countries which offer enough quantity of healthy and social insurances to them.
What we want to say is that, the whole social insurances are missing in some developing countries where the average personal income supposedly reaches 380 U.S.$ while in fact it doesn't reach more than 85 U.S. Dollars only.
As it is known, we mentioned above that unemployment is an universal dilemma, where all countries of the world are suffering from it, and while it focuses in the Arab states, it has become more potent in Yemen where we need more than 4 million job vacancies during the next twenty years. This is in accordance to the increasing growth of the employment agent which reaches more than 4% yearly, which is considered as one of the highest rates around the world.
At the same time, ILO mentioned to the universal rising of the unemployment range, which hits the youth more than any other category, especially young women. In Yemen, according to the employment agent's surbey for 1999, women's unemployment rate reached approximately 23.7% while the men's unemployment rate reached 76.3%. It shows a very clear decrease in the rate of Yemeni women's employment despite their number that reached nearly half of the population.
Moreover, the results of this survey shows that the employment's agent concentrates in the rural areas which amounts to about 74.9% of the grand total of employment's agent in Yemen and the remainder which is actually 25.1% for townsmen.
This tragedy pushes us to feel the pale misery that drowns in the faces of the unemployed in our society that suffer throughout but still waiting for a solution sooner or later.
The statistics refers to direct increasing of the foreign employment in these Arab countries, where it was half a million employees in the 1975th, rising to 5.7 million in the 1993rd, and reaching up to 8.8 million in 2002. Whereas using the foreign employment in Arab countries, Yemen is also considered as one of thecauses that aggravated unemployment, therefore the best way to solve this problem is to replace the local employment instead of the foreign groups with a percentage not less than 90-95%. In addition to that, training and rehabilitation of the local employees for perfect and increased production in the future will be a great step towards the economic independence, and for that result, the number of worker groups in different fields should be sent abroad in various periods of time in order to collect information and obtain sufficient experience.
About the population's growth and its effects towards the high rates of unemployment especially in a country like Yemen, it is also necessary to decrease the rates of fertility. Despite of the retraction of the population's growth in Yemen in the last few years from 3.7% to 3.5%, it is still one of the highest rates in the world, whereas if the rates remain in the same level, it is expected that the population may rise to more than 43 million during the year of 2025.
Some studies and surveys explain that there is a strong relation between the level of the mothers' education and the rate of fertility. The the rate of real fertility of the uneducated mothers reached 6.9%, however the rate of fertility of educated mothers who have basic education only reached 3.2%.
What about the educational outcomes and its graduates, which have accumulated year after year?
The object requires thinking of small projects construction, re-fertilization of the agricultural areas, construction of the barren lands, developmen and enlargement of the present investment projects for higher capacity, and opening new employment fields by using and activating the new technical and electronic services.
Also, the requirement needs to help young people who are despaired, to think correctly by ideal and suitable ideas to achieve what they are desiring, and support them by money to restart again. The handicrafts and the different sorts of the arts should be encouraged to open modern and wide horizons for these kinds of works.
Offering scholarships to the students gives them required power to rush towards the development of their country and enrich their jobs by the experiences which will be obtain after coming back home.
However, helping the possessors of special needs and annihilation of the beggary by ensuring the social and health insurances that are important for life will be in the benefit of all and will solve the problems that are worse than unemployment.
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