Youth Employment Bill Mistakenly Assumes Unemployed Youth Are Invisible

The National Youth Employment Authority Bill 2015 is worth reviewing for a couple of reasons. First, the sum of its objects is to respond to the unemployment problem in Kenya by establishing structures and regulations that would expand job opportunities for Kenya’s youth. Judged by its intentions alone, it presents an interesting intersection of the representative and legislative roles of Parliament because its sponsor is youthful and clearly intends to respond to the most pressing needs of his constituency and at the same time, it has captured the policy issue of employment and attempted to render a solution through Parliament’s primary authority to pass legislation.   

This Bill represents the conventional approach to economic policy in Kenya, which can be summed up as the good, the bad and the ugly of policymaking. Judged only by the initiatives that bear the name ‘youth’ in their titles, there’s no doubt that both the Executive and the Legislature understand that policies which create employment are desperately needed and the sponsor of the National Youth Employment Authority Bill must be commended for recognising this acute situation.

Equally commendable is that the Bill is concise compared to the highly-detailed, repetitive bills that Kenya’s legislative houses have been drafting. On the other hand, good intentions alone may be a precondition, but are no guarantee of effective economic policy. Having reviewed this short bill, it is less than clear that the objectives in Section 3 could be satisfied by the mechanisms and institutions that are contained within it.

 

After defining its purpose together with the scope of its application, the Bill reverts to the predictable response in Kenya by creating an authority whose name forms the title of this proposed law. This, to my mind, shows no attempt at policy innovation except for the known fact that government routinely forms boards, authorities and commissions to deal with policy issues.

The Director-General is head, but the main decision-maker is the Board, comprising a chair nominated by the President, a motley of principal secretaries, Secretary of the Commission on University Education, and representatives nominated by the Federation of Employers, Council of Governors and representatives of the National Youth Council.

This formation is consistent with the existing approach to constituting boards in this republic. I am unsure that getting cabinet secretaries, who should have their hands full already, together with a half-dozen youth seated in a room will generate any new employment. In short, this is clearly about what Kenyan policymakers do when policy ideas are scarce: create an institution consisting of diverse people, but numerically dominated by professionals from the public sector.

A tax-paying Kenyan should also be concerned with this arrangement, and not only because of the considerable allowances and remuneration that is guaranteed for the members of the board.

Reading Section 19 of the Bill, it is clear that the institution will suffer from an overly meddlesome Board that will make the Director-General’s work difficult, since this section places responsibility for hiring staff in the hands of this board. This assignment of executive responsibility to boards that should conduct oversight has been a clear source of conflict in many commissions and boards in Kenya’s public sector. That it is being repeated here is further evidence that perhaps some legislators do not care to learn from the performance of their predecessors, and from the standpoint of good corporate governance, this is bad design.

The most damaging issue with this Bill, however, is that while it establishes a very elaborate structure with ambitious goals, the authority’s real and exclusive task will be to compile a database of unemployed youth seeking employment. It seems that the assumption behind the Bill is that youth unemployment arises from their being invisible to potential employers. This assumption is so patently mistaken as to render the entire Bill laughable.

The argument for a repository of job seekers to be matched to positions is truly important, and is supported by empirical analysis in labour economics, but it is ridiculous and wasteful to create a state corporation merely to keep a database to match job seekers with employers. There are numerous job matching sites based in Kenya and outside the territory, hence the surprise that scarce public money should be used for this.

This path proves another bad habit in Kenyan policy design, where arms of government substitute simply throwing money and new institutions at complex problems for good policy thinking.The sponsor of the bill merits an ‘A’ for intention but dull grades for corporate design and technical fitness.

Reference : www.nation.co.ke