More than 40 percent of the unemployed and underemployed in Nigeria engage in small-skilled labour or what some people may call unskilled or hard labour.
These people are vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, discrimination and often used to perpetuate crimes.
Heroes are also those young people who reject the myth of their generation apathy, and endure all the hardships to earn their living legally, refusing to take shortcuts and remaining contented with their little income.
When I look at these brave young people, I do not only see bricklayers, labourers, plumbers, electricians, commercial motorcyclists, security guards, pushers of wheelbarrow, local toilet plushers etc. What I see are nation builders, service providers, highly-skilled labourers and movers of the economy.
Some might consider them as unskilled or semi-skilled labourers, but the nation will realise how inelastic their services are, when these groups of small-skilled labourers organise themselves and go for a month strike; then we will realise that we cannot build the houses we live in, we can’t fix electric issues in our houses, we can’t push our loads in the parks or market places, and we can’t do the hard labour in other construction works. Then the whole country will stand still. That is the least you can imagine how important these small-skilled labourers are.
Imagine a young man spending 30 years doing hard labour, many times underpaid and exploited, and yet endured. This same young man will build houses, offices and roads, and when he gets old and no longer having the strength to do these jobs, he gets nothing to feed himself and his family, and he will eventually resort to begging to sustain his life.
His greatest asset, his strength, is exhausted. Why can’t he receive pension allowances in appreciation for his service to the nation? I think some of these young men deserve better pension scheme and wage package than some of the negligent government workers and politicians.
In some developed countries, small-skilled labourers earn high, as their services are appreciated and recognised. For example, in the UK, the wage for every handyman is regulated and standardised according to locations. A bricklayer gets around N100 per brick laid, and a handyman doing odd jobs gets N5, 600 per hour while gas heating boiler services for go for N16, 800 etc.
These are regulated for London locations, and therefore clients cannot cheat or exploit their service providers, and vice versa. This also helps in predicting cost of production. These are usually reviewed periodically to accommodate market changes. By regulating and standardising small-skilled jobs, unemployed young graduates will then start estimating how much they would be losing for every one hour lost doing nothing.
They would then realise that, they only need a particular skill to earn certain amount of money in one hour or per load of work/service. This will attract young people to learn skills despite the chunks of their educational certificates.
Therefore, regulating and standardising the wages for small skilled labourers as well as creation of unique health and pension scheme for them will motivate young people to engage in skills acquisitions. These hard labour or small-skilled jobs should be professionalised, someone who spent three years working as a plumber or electrician should be considered as having a professional work experience for three years.
He could add that to his CV. They should be encouraged to set up an organisation, which will register all members engaged in these types of jobs. Their organisation will be protecting and advocating for their interests, and will provide frequent trainings and ensure improvement of quality of their work/services.
Their organisation will receive certain incentives to subsidise their work and to help reduce charge rate. These incentives will be shared among its members. The government will set requirements for every small-skilled workers association, which might include, significance, charge rate, quality of work, decency of the workers, compliance to standard and regulations etc.
If young people engaged in these small-skilled jobs are recognised as professionals and receive attractive wages, the percentage of youth unemployed will be reduced by at least 20 percent. Therefore, in an effort to reduce unemployment and poverty, small-skilled labour should be professionalized.
Educational institutional curriculum should also provide wide range of vocational and technical skills, so that young graduates could learn these skills during their education, so they can automatically start providing services immediately after their studies without having to wait for government jobs.
Written by Ahmed Adamu, an Economist and Chairperson, Commonwealth Youth Council.
