Graduates narrate sad stories of how jobs have remained elusive

Job seekers at a past KWS recruitment drive. [File/Standard]

By Standard Team

Tom Ian Kubasu - Newspaper vendor

Kenya: Before I delve into my story, let me first register my disappointment with the Kenyan companies (the employers). They act very hypocritical. They are very dishonest and I wonder what happened to corporate governance.

Nothing exemplifies this better than the case of a Ms Brenda Metto of Moi University who featured in Day 1 of this series. She had been applying for jobs for more than five years in vain. I now wonder where these corporate organisations are getting the moral ground to start falling over themselves with job offers to Brenda yet in the first place they denied her a job.

Back to my story. I am a graduate of Business Administration (Banking and Microfinance) from Makerere University and I have been looking for a job since 2009 when I graduated, but in vain. Whenever I apply to our Kenyan banks they tell me I am not qualified. It reached a time that I began asking myself ‘Did I study the right course?’ 

The experience has really crashed my self-esteem.

Despite employers claiming they don’t employ people without experience, I have hustled and got three years experience, yet nothing is forthcoming. Sample this: I underwent a three-week intensive training in customer service and best management practice from Uganda Telkom and worked for one year. I undertook a one year internship in Sukari Sacco in Mumias.

I also worked in Mumias Sugar Company as casual stock control clerk for one year. And my last engagement was in March this year when I worked for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission as a presiding officer.

Despite this work history, some employers still have the audacity to tell me I am not qualified and worse still that I don’t have experience. Whaat? In what?

Right now I am a newspaper vendor. I buy a few papers then distribute to companies in Nairobi’s Industrial Area every morning with the hope some of these companies will see that I am really underemployed.

Thanks again for highlighting the issues that affect us.

Samuel Mutuma

After seeing your request on your website I have decided to write to you. My name is Samwel Mutuma and I completed my bachelor’s degree programme in Community Resource Management and Sociology from Kenyatta University in April last year.

Since then I have made over 200 job applications both on email and in hard copy through postal addresses. I was only called for two interviews which I received regret letters. Since then I have done manual jobs which do not last long.

Currently, I am living with a relative. 

Apart from the degree programme, I have a certificate in peer counselling and a driving licence with two years experience and a certificate of good conduct.

I would be grateful if I was connected to an employer. I am willing to take up any job manual or official to earn a decent living and be independent.  

Gideon O Wandede

I want to begin by thanking The Standard for this brilliant work you are doing to the people of Kenya. The Standard Group has been the eye-opener to Kenyans.

Being one of the desperate graduates, who have no means to fend for their families, save for engaging in trivial, dehumanising and at times not really economically viable engagements, I wish to give you (The Standard) a pat on your back for exposing how Kenya is slowly killing her hustling youths.

How would the same Government who paid for my fees through the Higher Education Loans Board turn around and deny me employment despite frantically trying to apply through the public service portal? Now there is an amnesty for the loan defaulters which is running upto July 7.

I owe the institution more than Sh470,000 but from the work I am doing, I earn Sh15,000 per month from which I have to pay rent, place food on the table, take my children to school and share with  my sickly parents. Surely why is the Government killing us? 

Keep exposing our frustrations. I have a box full of copies of applications I have made. For records on public service, you can check on psckjobs.go.ke, check application status then put my ID No. 23240088. [email protected]

Peter Kariuki

I am writing on behalf of my brother Samuel Gicheru Kariuki who graduated from Moi University in the year 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in Tourism and Wildlife. After reading the story of Brenda, I could not hold my tears recalling my brother’s job search of 10 years now.

My brother, who is our third born, was very bright and we thought one day he will get a good job and make our parents happy. Little did we know he will end up been the most desperate person in our family.

I think some of these courses should be banned in our institutions of higher learning since they can’t guarantee graduates jobs.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the tourism industry, and who do they employ, if not my brilliant brother? My other brothers and I who did diploma have jobs but our highly educated brother is jobless doing odd jobs and calling himself a hustler.

I always cry for him and pray one day he will get a well-paying.

Njoroge Waweru

Thank you The Standard for providing this forum where we, the unemployed, can pour our hearts out in recounting our tribulations in this rough, bitter and painful terrain of looking for elusive work.

Personally, I feel you have gone out of your way to even think of the plight of the unemployed, featuring the issues of unemployment in a country that you believe it is moving forward in leaps and bounds in terms of development and economic progress.

Your gesture of going forward to invite us, the victims of unemployment, is enormous corporate social responsibility; it is an amiable action which should be emulated by other non-State actors, the Church and professional bodies.

The nightmare

I’m a man aged 37, languishing beneath the yoke of abject poverty owing to perennial unemployment. This is my 13th year since I graduated from the University of Nairobi with BA in Economics.

It is extremely difficult securing an opportunity in Kenya, even getting manual work to do to eke out a living. It is an encumbering nightmare. The consequences of unemployment in that you have to be condemned to poverty, due to lack of social safety nets in the country, are debilitating and excruciating.

Subsequently, I’ve suffered inordinate stigma, in my own experience, and as a trained economist who has learned evaluation and other gauging parameters in determining situational indicators in areas such as development, economy, governance and social issues.

The stigma suffered by the unemployed is worse than that of those living with HIV were subjected to in yesteryears, when the scourge used to claim hundreds of Kenyans every week, during the late 90s and in the beginning of last decade. The treatment that society treats us is worse than that of prisoners, many of whom have committed crimes.

I am always treated with contempt everywhere I go, even when I try to do good, for instance, like participating in community affairs in my village, my unemployment will still somewhat hinder my interaction with people in the village.

This is because I overdo things in efforts of exhibiting my intellectual prowess, and in this I seem to be competing with established members of the society, some of whom are semi-literate. I have tried playing some roles in different churches still in efforts to showcase my academic achievements, but I am quickly put where I belong: Humiliation and ostracism.

Economic consultant

I have attempted at many things in trying to productively occupy myself, unfortunately, all my efforts have never yielded anything productive. I fear old age finding me without having ever worked. Today I do not every attempt seeking formal employment because the many years I’ve spent on the trenches looking for a job, are simply playing against me by seriously denting my CV.

This is because, in Kenya, the first thing an employer needs to know from a job applicant, is what you do, indeed the profile of what you do brightens one’s prospects of clinching a job, and many times academic transcripts have only been secondary. Your intellectual capacity or even your capability comes a remote consideration.

I have bought storybooks and sold them at a profit. I have sold vegetables. I have tried to teach functional literacy to semi-literate adults in business, especially Somali refugees but insecurity on their part on me has always quickly edged me away from such work.

I have also tried to work as a consultant but I quickly came down like a house of cards because of lack of credentials like powerful referees who could back me in getting deals or even in sustaining them, when I secure one.

This is in the area of economics, a very professionally sensitive area. When I tried to become a village consultant on matters economic, being my field of expertise, I encountered a lot of mistrust because I have to handle financial matters and finances to Africans are still private matters to be trusted on relatives and close friends.

In all this, in my humble estimation of why unemployment of university graduates is so rampant in Kenya, I can say our education and the expectations it tailors us to be, (the oath of receiving degree during graduation was ‘I give you this degree to read and do all that appertains to it’.

Long before we graduated we were being lectured that we are being trained as professionals, as graduation neared, we rehearsed rigorously for the event.

The best the Government today can do is to declare unemployment as a national disaster, so all national efforts can be devoted to reduce the burden of unemployment, partnerships should be formulated between various state and state actors to address critically this malaise.

I’m humbly appealing to Kenyan churches particularly established churches like the Catholic, Anglican and mainstream evangelicals to engage the unemployed youth in a missionary way of reaching out, this is a forgotten population, the churches should remember that the missionaries when they introduced.

Reduce taxes

But Government in its responsibility of providing a conducive environment can work on macroeconomic policies, which as a trained economist only know only too well, can’t be realised now — but a timeframe can be set at implementing them simultaneously at a given period of time.

I insist achieving them at the same time for an economically stimulating impact which can create many jobs progressively, for instance the following measures can be planned at reducing taxation on fuel as the country gears to achieve full commercial oil production, and remove Sh35 from the Sh40-something in form tax that it collects in every litre of petrol and diesel, at the same period reduce the price of electricity by liberalising fully the electric supply sector.

Like what happened to the defunct Kenya Post and Telecommunications Corporation when the telecommunications sector was set free, then zero-rate tax on farm inputs, stop taxing the informal sector for a certain period, and effect this at the same time as the above measures, finally zero-rate taxes on food products.

This in a stable macro-economic framework, devoid of corruption in public service, can be effected in three to four years’ time from today and in the course of the following one year, one million jobs can be created in the formal sector alone, and three million jobs in the informal sector.

If that tempo is sustained in five years from the effect of this macro-policy, unemployment could as well as be history being taught the same we learn that once upon a time there was the dangerous disease of leprosy.

Henry M Momanyi

Thanks for highlighting the problem of unemployment in Kenya. In truth, I have been without job for more than four years since graduating from Moi University with BSc in Food Science and Nutrition (First Class Honours).

I struggled to get a stable job and I failed miserably. It is very sad that I was raised in very humble background with my villagers volunteering to educate me through primary and secondary, and with the support from Helb I managed to complete the 844 system.

The worst dream and reality is when I did not get a job offer even one which can console me that through education you can be able to buy ugali. It is a very painful experience that even when I got scholarship from Ruforum, I don’t know whether I will get a job after graduating next week June 28 from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology with MSc in Research Methods.

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