![]() By Therow Zuaru Employment in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has remained stagnant since 2014 with millions of unemployed looking for jobs. The formal job market currently can only accommodate between 400,000 and 500,000. As more young people enter the job market this year after graduating from tertiary institutions and schools, the chances of securing formal employment is slim. Employment had remained stagnant despite the increase in potential workers coming out of educations institutions. The country had an eligible workforce of between 3 million and 4 million adults (over the age of 18) not in fulltime employment. The majority of this segment of society sustained their livelihoods through the rural semi-subsistence sector or urban informal economy. Some well-educated individuals end up making a living in the informal sector, selling betel-nut and second-hand clothes on the streets. (𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑟, 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑡𝑢𝑡𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐴𝑓𝑓𝑎𝑖𝑟𝑠, 2023) This devastating unemployment situation is indeed the result of lack of a well-thought-out planning in our education system. There is nothing that fuels unemployment in PNG like our dysfunctional educational system. Our institutions produces remembering tanks for employments but not thinking tanks for personal and national growth. Lets look at the reality of things;
▪️EDUCATION SYSTEM Firstly, the current education system is a major catalyst for unemployment in the country; The education system, crafted by the UN's curriculum division, especially drafted for PNG, is designed in a way that the system produces employees, not employers. No matter how educated you become, at whatever level of qualifications, they be PHDs, CAs, name them, the individual is simply being prepared to work for, not to create knowledge. The system was faultily designed to produce workers for labor force, it was never designed to solve problems in the society. The school system introduced during colonization was meant to promote remembering and not critical thinking for the sake of creating good employees who don’t think but can remember. Secondly, the system over the years was designed to a sort of competition as to who is the most brilliant. The whole essence is to memorize, write exams and pass that knowledge. So because we learn to pass exams people just focus on passing exams, they cheat, they sort just to have their way, and that’s all. We are so messed up with this lengthy useless, out of touch education to colonize our mentality and determine our demise.The outcomes only produces containers of useless knowledge in commercial quantities. Thirdly, dependency theory is the blueprint of he current education system, and is indoctrinated into by our institutions. The education system is flawed. The system creates a mentality of dependancy in our children, never teaching them to be independent, sovereign beings able to stand alone without the government or without a job. The education system makes sure our children will be government and corporate slaves for the rest of their lives. Finally, our educational institutions; colleges, universities are producing job seekers instead of solution providers. PNG don’t need job seekers, we already have enough of them. What PNG needs are pathfinders and solution providers, not just certificate, degree, PhD holders. Graduates are supposed to be employers of labour and wealth creators, not job seekers. When the rate at which a system is producing job seekers is exponentially higher than the rate at which entrepreneurs are evolving, the end result is always skyrocketing unemployment rate. Our kind of educational system that produces graduates who are only seen as a means of production. The graduates who cannot solve problems, neither can anyone who is a product of it come out to challenge the system, except the individual involved is an outlier. When an educational system is misconceived, the consequences are leadership problems, poverty, lawlessness, social and economic instability. There is nothing that fuels unemployment in PNG like our dysfunctional educational system. ▪️GOING FORWARD PNG is the youngest and fastest-growing in terms of populations. According to the International Monetary Fund (MF). By 2030, it is estimated the number of young people in the labour force will increase to 6 million. Increasing population growth on the country means that there is a significant gap between the number of young people seeking work and limited employment opportunities. Instead of putting a critical analytical thinking at the centre of PNG school system and education of students at all levels. The governments continued to prioritise education by memorisation; The dominant purpose of education is about preparing young people for employments: a colonial inherited system of education that produces nothing good but a bunch of school graduates, whose primary ambition is merely to aspire towards the acquisition of school ‘certificates and university degrees for employments. Nothing will change unless we change the system. By education does not mean producing literate individuals holding paper qualifications. Here we are talking about producing competitive and innovative talents. Young men and women who have the capacity to generate resources, create ideas, and provide leadership in various spheres of life for the development of PNG, whether from within or outside the country. While the other nations education system has been upgraded over the years to embrace critical thinking and creativity, ours in PNG is still anti-intellectual and hostile to new ways of thinking. Paper-based education that only produces clerks, labourers, administrators and managers whose value are only seen in how well they simply obey the line of command. Whether its being a doctor, pilot, lawyer, engineer, accountant. You're still an employee. The only difference is level of employment and salary rates. We need to work assiduously on transforming our educational system in PNG from paper-based education to skill and value-based education. We need a more robust and holistic form of education that will be value-based and also make room for problem-solving, “multiple intelligences”, emotional literacy, self-discovery, self-awareness, mindfulness, moral discipline, skill acquisition, and capacity development. Certificates and degrees that are capable of equipping one with, at least, the basic skills in life that would be useful in finding solutions to the basic human needs in one’s society and environment in PNG; capable of transforming our society into a modern-day world of technological revolution and scientific knowledge that will be the pride of every Papua New Guineans. Education is the bedrock to the development of every nation. The human resource capacity of every nation, developing or developed is incumbent on the capacity of its education system to supply this commodity. PNG, as a low income country should invest heavily on skills and value-based education to reduce dependency mentality within its human resource. "𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔; 𝑖𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑. 𝑆𝑜, 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑐𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠, 𝑎𝑐𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑠𝑘𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑝 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑏𝑙𝑒𝑚𝑠" We must not teach students to obtain qualifications that they can use to look for a job in the market. Rather than teaching students to acquire knowledge that they can use to create job opportunities. What should we do to do away with this mindsets? Do we have responsive policies to deal with this? Is our education system aimed at knowledge and skills acquisition or dishing out papers to overload the market? Are we producing quality educational products or graduates with skills deficiency? Unemployment is an epidemic that is contributing to social welfare, security, health and economic burden in the country. Educational system in PNG is a time-bomb waiting to explode if something urgent and drastic is not done. 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