By Nicholas Bass
A lecturer at the University of The Gambia, Alasan Gitteh, has disclosed that the educational migration of youths into Western Universities is creating a vacuum within the labor force of The Gambia that requires the attention of every stakeholder to remedy this situation by providing jobs for Gambian youths.
In an interview with him, he noted that potential graduates from the University of The Gambia are not using any illegal route to travel to the Western country but they are migrating to the Western Universities through international airports for educational purposes due to the lack of jobs in The Gambia.
“Migration of Gambian graduates into the Western Universities is the recent phenomenon that is creating a vacuum in our Gambian labor force due to lack of jobs and financial support for these graduates who have toiled in our Gambian University for a skill. This syndrome calls for concerted efforts of every Gambian to put their hands on desks for a better workforce in our beloved country”, he clamored.
He noted that if these potential graduates are not given the right jobs to the skills they acquired, educational migration of the country’s noble youths will increase rapidly which may result in set-back in national development.
Some of these graduates who are permanent residents of Western countries, he said, have migrated with their families for better job opportunities.
This trend has made thousands of Gambian graduates tender their applications to Western Universities online where they are enrolled for master’s degree programs together with a partial tuition fee that results in permanent settlement.
“Nepotism has also made thousands of graduates redundant and it has made most of them divert into other jobs they do not study at the University for survival. The rate of unemployment is creasing annually and if The Gambian government pays less attention to this the Gambia will result in depopulation and a great setback in our developmental goals,”
he explained.
More so, he said it is a high time the government should replace those who had retired from any institutions with youths while those experienced Gambian should continue to coach the youth in different works of life for sustainable growth in the Gambian labor force.
Gitteh, therefore, enjoined the government, philanthropies, NGOs, and Gambians in Western countries to create jobs for the youths to discourage educational migration into Western countries.
