In South Sudan, taking tea is the only medicine to fight the stress of unemployment
By Kuek Deng Kuek, Juba, South Sudan
Friday, July 31, 2020 (PW) — It is almost a year now since I completed my basic degree of science in Public Health from St. Lawrence University Kampala, Uganda. It took me four years to complete my university studies and if you are to add the 8 years of Primary School and 4 years of secondary education, you will definitely arrive to the total years of the studies to be 16 years of vigorous work of academia if added up in totality.
However, what I had learned so far is that the job in south Sudan is not given based on technical know-how or meritocracy but it is awarded based on technical know-who.
In any other nation there are always two main sectors that a citizen of a given country gets an employment from, that is the private sector which employ technocrats and public sector which also employ technocrats and those who had obtained reasonable qualification like secondary school certificate for the case of South Sudan.
Moreover, the public sector is known to be compromised politically, I mean like when you don’t have a uncle in the government then it is not easy to get job in public sector in south Sudan. This is something relating to the issues to do with corruption, nepotism, and tribal relationship.
In actually fact, the private sector like NGOs, private companies and so on and so forth are known internationally to be free from corruption, mismanagement and nepotism but here in south Sudan they are also compromised politically.
They don’t employ people based on technical know-how, they don’t employ people based on merits, they don’t employ people based competence, they are doing it in contrast, for instances, if you are Dinka in the office working for a certain organization or a company then the fellow employees must be from the same tribe, similarly to the Nuer and they rest of the tribes in south Sudan.
This is making it very hard for us to move this country forward, am wondering that the only way of fighting the stress of unemployment is taking tea everyday around rukuba in the markets in south Sudan. Research shows that 73% of the youths in south Sudan are unemployed. Meaning they are managing their stresses through taking tea method or playing cards from sun set to the evening hours.
For my case I was trained during my university studies to be more of job creator than job seeker but those ideas are getting lost everyday because for one to make it you first have to get capital to commerce small business scale and enterprise but there is no institution of the government that gives loads to the citizen to undertake small business scale.
Businessmen in south Sudan are proven to be rich but their richness is based on government contracts, they are not creating an employment to the citizens, to me, they would have constructed private schools, making agricultural schemes, and more to get many youths employed. They only know how to form money transfer companies in order to be known as rich people with money. This is very unfortunate indeed. They are not working on the legacies they will leave behind.
Youths in South Sudan are resilience youths, just like the generation of President Salva Kiir Mayardit, and his other colleagues who devoted their youthful times to fight for the independence of this country and they have achieved it after 21 years of struggle without being paid with money. I know we shall also endure this situation and work for the better south Sudan.
Writer is Kuek Deng Kuek, a South Sudan Concern Citizen, he can be reached via Kuekdengkuek@gmail.com.
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