BY TSEGAYE TILAHUN
Cities and towns can use a range of principles and approaches to apply integrated urban beautification, solid waste management systems and green economy development to reduce unemployment and generate income. Since the Ethiopian cities and towns have various challenges, addressing these problems through integrated efforts is decisive.
Citizens’ social and economic benefits can be addressed by solving environmental and urban challenges. Proper implementation and management of integrated urban beautification, solid waste management and green economy development will contribute much towards the efforts of job creation and unemployment reduction. However, it needs more to be done in the future.
Currently, there are efforts to apply these strategies to create job opportunities to enable to generate income and reduce unemployment in the cities and towns.
For instance, Addis Ababa City Administration has been performing various activities such as integrated urban beautification, solid waste management and green economy development to play its role in creating job opportunities and reducing unemployment.
Urbanization provides a range of opportunities for addressing social and environmental burdens such as job creation, income generation, greenery development, unemployment reduction, recycling and other opportunities.
On Monday, Deputy Mayor of Addis Ababa City Administration, Adanech Abebe has held discussion with stakeholders on the ways to create job opportunities for societies in their localities where they live.
The sectors that planned to create job opportunities are integrated urban beautification, solid waste management and green economy development.
Therefore, cities and towns are believed to contribute substantially to achieve higher levels of resource efficiency. A range of strategies can be used to integrate the environment in urban planning and management. The attempt also needs to strengthen the relationship between stakeholders and partners to support it.
As to Deputy Mayor, the job creation effort in these sectors should remain a culture in the community. The city administration has been working solid waste management, urban beautification and green economy development to create job opportunities to enable to generate income and minimize unemployment rate in Addis Ababa city.
In collaboration with its stakeholders and partners, Addis Ababa City Administration is working to reduce unemployment rate and create additional job opportunities for residents especially youths and females.
Currently, the world has been urbanizing rapidly. Rapid urbanization is becoming a challenge for job creation and income generation. Its impact is also significant for the growth and development of a country. Even if the solid waste management system in Addis Ababa city by micro and small scale enterprises is not adequate both in terms of coverage and frequency, the effort is encouraging as it has dual function for communities.
To modernize solid waste management, green economy development as well as create ample job opportunities for unemployed citizens, building the capacity of institutions is important. As part of it, the city administration has been underpaying various activities to support this activity.
To enable the government to renovate the status, spatial coverage, enforce law and solid management system as well as improve poor institutional, financial capacity and involvement of the community, integrated efforts are underway. The city government has given due emphasis for solid waste management and greenery development to enable to create more jobs for youths as well as the other societies.
According to Adanech, the administration is working to improve the work culture of citizens. And it has planned to create more than 28, 000 job opportunities in various sectors during this Ethiopian fiscal year. It has finalized site preparation as well as human resource identification to commence training in all technical and vocational colleges in Addis Ababa.
As a result, the training will commence today in these three sectors. All stakeholders and other institutions have been consulting on pre-training and related issues, she said.
The Deputy Mayor has called women to be beneficiaries and participants as the city has been working to engage 50 percent of women in job creation and unemployment reduction activities in all sectors. According to the Office of Addis Ababa Press Secretariat, the City Administration has allocated a 200 million birr budget.
The job creation opportunity to engage or will begin in the areas where there is an integrated urban beautification, green economy development and solid waste management will begin in January.
Moreover, to boost the urban economy and minimize unemployment, it needs laying the foundation for the development of the industry sector. As part of it, Addis Ababa City Administration has been given due emphasis to lay the foundation for the expansion and development of the small and medium scale manufacturing industry sector.
The micro and small scale manufacturing sector needs to be developed and expanded to lay the foundation for industrial development, Adanech said.
She noted that as the sector has a potential to create several job opportunities and minimize unemployment rate, special emphasis should be given for it. Solving small and medium manufacturing industry sector obstacles and identifying sector problems is also important.
The manufacturing sector has a capacity to create more job opportunities to reduce unemployment in the country. Developing and expanding the manufacturing sector will enable to achieve its mission. She called up on stakeholders to identify and solve the problems in the effort to reduce unemployment. The discussion is expected to provide the necessary support for the activities to be carried out in the 2013 Ethiopian fiscal year.
As urbanization is conducive to economic growth and job creation, the government has been implementing a series of policies in order to facilitate sustainable urbanization and income generation as well as reduce unemployment in cities and towns across the country.
Integrated solid waste management, greenery development and urban beautification have been playing a key role in reducing unemployment and supporting the income generation and job creation efforts in Addis Ababa. The effort has dual benefits for residents.
Income generation and job creation will support the city’s growth and development by creating a healthy and clean environment, it stated.
According to participants, appropriate training especially for youths and changing the outlook of the communities to engage these sectors is crucial to tackle the issue of urban unemployment.
The inclusive efforts in urban areas especially in Addis Ababa will help to support unemployed societies to get permanent and temporary jobs.
To make the planned activities successful, adequate technical assistance and capacity building training for participants and other professionals are considered as key elements.
The Ethiopian herald December 26/2020
