Youths Insist On Saturated Jobs with Few Opportunities - Experts Youths consulting one another on their future , after visiting some stands at the Fne's employment forum in Douala Experts specialised in the question of youth unemployment in Cameroon are of the opinion that young Cameroonians, desperately looking for jobs, keep insisting on jobs that are already saturated and which have very few opportunities. They made the remark recently in Douala during an employment forum. The event that held from February 2 to 3 permitted the participants and organisers to conclude that youths in Cameroon, despite new opportunities that could be found in other sectors, maintain their choices on professions related to fields such as Journalism, Marketing and Advertising, Accountancy, Communication, Management, Banking and Finance, Law, Economics, to name only these few. In a chat with The SUN, Ngo Tonye Debora, the organiser of the forum, made it clear that “it is quite unfortunate to notice that young Cameroonians are still stressing or putting all their energies to work in sectors that are already saturated and which have very few opportunities to those who operate there”. She added that “they should change their way of seeing things today in Cameroon, because the country is progressively changing. We are in a situation where the government is getting ready to launch big development projects like those of the Lom Panger or Me’Vele; the construction of the Limbe and Kribi deep sea ports will soon start”. To her, popular jobs no longer help. And it is time for the youths to begin to get more interest in jobs of the technological sector such as hydraulic (the science of the use of liquids moving under pressure), industry specialised in the making of metals, environmental jobs, rural sociology, to mention only these ones. She insisted that it is only those with these qualifications who shall be recruited in the said projects. “It is terrible to notice that for the construction of the Kribi deep sea port, the gov’t will once again be forced, like it was the case with the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, to recruit technicians from foreign countries like Argentina, Malaysia, Europe or the USA, when they would have trained here young citizens to do the job”, she lamented. On what pushes the youth to always want to choose jobs with few openings, she cites the lack of information and orientation of the youths. “All of them dream of working in the public service and not in the private sector. That is, they are not interested in entrepreneurship”, she indicated. Gilles Lewat, the Executive Director of the Youth Business Cameroon Association in Douala even goes further in the explanation of the matter. “There is deficit of information of the youths. They are not very interested in strategic information that can give real information on the indications in the employment market and the new employment opportunities. He continued that “many workshops, forums etc are usually covered by the press. It now depends on the use of these information by them”, adding that the question can be related to other sectors.“How do promoters of schools of the Higher Education sector and even Rectors of the State Universities proceed with the orientation policy at each academic school year? You know, it is also their duty to ensure that the students are endowed with the adequate orientation and training, so that the youth can easily find a job in the society”, he said. Despite this failure in the orientation of our youths and the insufficiencies noticed in their training, Gilles Lewat remains convinced that there are occasions to get informed through forums and seminars. “When one comes to a trade fair like this one, he or she sees that there are few youths who come to seek for information. The young Cameroonian no longer believes in his potentials”, he said, while maintaining that such behaviour is understandable. For, it is always frustrating to be caught up with the daily realities, to be at the bottom after so many years of studies. Bu must one abandon when employment becomes rare? The two experts said no ! ‘We insist that joblessness is a state of mind which must not be taken care of”, Ngo Tonye Debora and Gilles Lewat maintained. They hammered that the major solution to unemployment today in the country is self-employment or self-fulfilment. “It is always good to undertake. But the most difficult thing to do is to start very little somewhere”, they concluded. By Joseph Roland Djotié.