2 - 8 August 2001
Issue No.545
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 2 - 8 August 2001 Issue No.545 |
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A case study
State employment schemes have floundered for so long and in so many ways that efforts to revitalise them and thus reduce unemployment while boosting the morale of an educated public forced to undertake menial tasks, assume Sisyphian proportions.
Every now and again the state makes a number of jobs available, sensibly imposing conditions -- "diploma candidates must not be over the age of 22," for example -- to reduce the number of appointments, ensuring that its own, already overcrowded institutions can accommodate them.
Recently, when the government made jobs available in the municipality of Zaqaziq, the city began to heave with university graduates and qualified technicians bearing application forms and identity papers.
The situation of a young family from a village near Zaqaziq clearly demonstrates how present-day efforts tend to defeat their own object. The husband has a Masters in Law but has failed to obtain employment as prosecutor, judge or solicitor. He works on his father's land without pay, in return for living in one room of his father's house, together with his pregnant wife and small child. The wife likewise has an agricultural diploma and dreams of a stable white-collar job; currently she is busy enough in the house, but she might as well be illiterate. When husband and wife arrive in Zaqaziq, believing that they qualify, they are told they are both too old to apply. The husband responds violently, but quickly he regains his composure. Taking his wife's hand, he gives the admissions office one last look as they wind their way back to the village.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is a senior editor at Al-Siyassa Al-Dawliya international politics review.
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