Efforts in place to create a million jobs

By Standard Reporter

College leavers have been asked to cease focusing all their energies on white-collar jobs, but consider self-employment in the informal sector.

With the coming into force of the Micro and Small Enterprises Act,

Ministry of Industrialisation and Enterprise Development wants to see to it that a million jobs are crated annually in the informal sector.

Speaking to The Standard on Saturday, the ministry’s PS Wilson Songa (pictured) said the jobs would be created in leather, agro-processing, furniture, metal fabrication and other trades in the informal sector.

He says the ministry is laying the foundation to support this and it should be achieved by 2016.

“The government will support the youth to create the much needed Micro and Small Enterprise Fund to back this crucial subsector by creating a revolving fund, from where entrepreneurs can borrow money at low interest rates,” he said.

“The Micro and Small Enterprise Authority, the youngest parastatal in the ministry in the last few months, has demonstrated that great potential and talents exist amongst our youth. CEO, Patrick Mwangi, knows this is where the jobs lie,” said Dr Songa.

The ministry will encourage strong linkages with support institutions and anti-counterfeit institution to help the youth create wealth.

The PS is hopeful this will continue to justify enhanced budgetary allocation in addition to financial support from development partners and the private sector to help realise the MSE Fund.

One potential area, Dr Songa said, is supplying furniture to government agencies and companies operating in Kenya.

“Our people make very good furniture. We want to help them improve on a few areas such as finishing so that their products can be as good as what is imported. The ministry will work with the industry to develop the enabling policies and legislation to encourage the buy Kenyan, build Kenya initiative,” he explains.

The PS says even though a majority of Kenyans rely on agriculture, they could benefit more by embracing value addition. “We are currently helping those who are in agro-processing to enhance their capacity,” he said.

“We are keen to have Kenya Industrial Research and Development Institute and the Numerical Machining Complex play a bigger role in equipping our people with small but very important machines that they require to do value addition,” he said.

The initiative could also see collapsed leather and textile industries revived.

“We are currently working with stakeholders to revive firms in leather that collapsed.”

This, he says, will help end export of hides and skin either in their raw or wet-blue form.

“When the textile industry was performing well in the 1970s and 1980s, Kenya had 22 ginneries. Currently, only 10 are operational. We want to revive the other 12 and see if more ginneries can be built because textile can create very many jobs for our people,” Dr Songa explains.