Higher and Tertiary Education Minister Amon Murwira has argued that Zimbabwe is not suffering a brain drain but circulation, adding that seeking jobs should be “a thing of the past” and unemployed graduates must create their own chances.
The great Zimbabwean brain drain started in the early 2000s with skilled workers across all sectors making an exodus to different countries in search for greener pastures.
Speaking during a Parliament Q & A session, Murwira said tertiary institutions will continue training people so they can start new enterprises instead of being used by already established business where they seek employment.
The cabinet minister was responding to the question: “What is government position with regards to brain drain as a result of those that have been trained yet are not employed?”
Murwira responded, “Zimbabwe will continue training people and we are also changing the philosophy of why we go to school.
“We go to school in order to be able to use our knowledge and skills and attitudes to start new enterprises. We should no longer talk about brain drain. We talk about brain circulation. We will be able to train our people so that they are useful to us either locally or elsewhere and they will be able to do things and be able to be useful to the country.
“This is a deep philosophy which diverts from the philosophy of going to school to be employed by the colonial master, kuzvishandira, kwete kushandiswa.
“Brain drain assumes that the pot which is cooking people has stopped cooking. We will continue cooking our people in our higher and tertiary education institutions. Hativapedzi, ticharamba tichi trainer vanhu to the extent that these days what they call brain drain is actually brain circulation because we can still use our people wherever they are.”
Murwira added that government has in the past been confronted with the question “Why are you training them when they are going into the streets?”
“When the education trains them how to be able to make things; how to be able to form industries and how to be able to work for yourself, whereby our duty will be how to provide them with the correct policy environment so that they are able to do so.
“Also, how to provide them with the venture fund so that they have the finances. We shall not construct people who work for other people,” he added.
Another MP from Shamva Joseph Mapiki queried why government was not considering finding opportunities for the skilled young people abroad as has been the case with trained Cuban doctors and teachers who have been sent to countries like Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Sudan.
“We have started this organised way of doing things with Rwanda and we believe we will be able to do it even more. We are in talks, for example, with neighbouring countries about this kind of approach whereby our people can be of use to those countries but also of use to us because we are basically exporting expertise,” replied Murwira.
Source NewZimbabwe
