Samoa moves to get unemployed young people working

Transcript

The Samoa government, with the help of United Nations agencies, is launching a campaign to get unemployed youth into productive work.

The Samoa National Action PLan on Youth Employment is being implemented by the youth Division of the Ministry of Women, Community and Social Development.

It is called the Samoa National Action Plan on Youth Employment or SNAP and assistant chief executive Misa Seletuta Pita told Don Wiseman why it is needed.

MISA SELETUTA PITA: About 11 percent of young people are in the labour market and 1850 of them are unemployed.

DON WISEMAN: You would like to get these people into work. Are there jobs for them?

MSP:  Well Samoa is a very small country and we have very limited employment opportunities in Samoa in terms of the formal sector hence we need to look into other ways of how we can support and promote employment opportunities. This is where we capitalise on our strengths in our own communities where we have communal land and where we also have a lot of strengths in the areas of agriculture and fisheries.  Also in terms of our traditional creative industries and traditional knowledge around handicraft and stuff like that.  These are our strengths and the action plan is supporting in terms of supports services, business services, business mentoring, business planning aspects, looking into start-up funds and other technical areas of training and even equipment.  Having that enabling environment, I think that is more realistic for Samoa than concentrating into our formal economy system which can only accommodate a small number of our young people coming out of the education system.

DW:  If you've got people with good educational qualifications, are they going to be willing to go and work on the traditional vegetable gardens?

MSP:  We are talking about a very dynamic group here.  Like I said, it's just a matter of changing approach and strategies engaging with young people.  Even agriculture, we can't just say to our young people, just go plant a taro.  We need to look at other particular areas that are also niche that young graduates can be directed to and supported.  We need to be very holistic in saying ok this is the only thing that is available for us.  We can also look into how ICT, it's a world of technology that young people are very into so it is just an approach where we sell these things that are potential for Samoa for our young people.  At the same time we also see entrepreneurship and enterprise development as one option where we can also provide further support to establish career pathways for these young people coming out of schools with specialised skills and qualifications.