The picture of poverty is a damning reality in our society. Therefore, scorns and mockery should be spat on the face of corporate industry and the bureaucracy.
Comrades, poverty is truly demeaning, dehumanising and strips one of dignity leaving one without a sense of belonging.
Pulling aside the social curtain, one is greeted by a heartbreaking living environment, a life of extreme poverty, joblessness, landlessness, malnutrition, overcrowded slums, escalating HIV/Aids and illiteracy.
Focusing your eyes further, you are likely to encounter boys and girls eager to pour in their premonition as far as their future is concerned.
An alarming number of unemployed youth are roaming the streets. Amongst them are scores of graduates freshly from institutions of higher learning with no hope of future job prospects.
Retrenchment poses a worsening scenario to those in the labour force and their immediate families who depend entirely on their monthly earnings for their livelihood meaning the breadwinner fails to pay domestic services.
Family no longer afford three meals a day. Eventually the family lose their home, leaving members of that particular family with no option but to drift onto the streets as beggars and adopt a life of scavenging for their survival.
Female members of that family retire to prostitution while males on the other hand, are likely to be potential aides for advancing druglords’ illegal drug dealings, live lives of crime and be drawn into gangsterism and drug abuse.
Conscious bureaucrats should be really concerned so they can vigorously uproot these life threatening elements, advancing to engulf humanity’s livelihood.
We need meaningful and visible relief measures for the total removal of the spectre of poverty in our society not the glossy pictures painted on magazines and newspapers’ front covers.
Government should:* double its efforts on social development programmes. * Amend and phase out legislation that results in job loss. * rid itself of corrupt elements whose actions impact badly on the taxpayers’ livelihoods. Instead * move in line with the advocacy of the Freedom Charter. * initiate programmes which will guarantee the youth’s full participation in the global economy, make education accessible to the poor, support and encourage educational, cultural and scientific initiatives and stage a vigorous campaign in the fight to end illiteracy.
Industry* assist communities’ social development programmes* adhere to laws that guarantee respect for workers’ rights and directed to end poverty* strive for youth economic empowerment* encourage a spirit of entrepreneurship.
Trade unions should:* assist its members to end retrenchment* strive for the creation of job opportunities* encourage members in skills development programmes* form workers’ cooperatives to ensure workers’ economic self-reliance* persuade government to amend laws that hit the working class hard* guard against any malpractice directed at them* start relief programmes for retrenched members.
Community leadership and the church* provide clothes and food parcels to the needy* volunteer their welfare services to the elderly and disabled* start educational trust fund to ensure needy youth pursue their educational ambitions * self-help home building projects* start agricultural projects for food sustenance* resuscitate indigenous knowledge systems.
Professionals and experts* volunteer their services to ordinary members of society* impart their skills to needy communities.
The youth* should free themselves from the jaws of poverty by initiating self-help projects eg carwashing, recycling, arts, culture and environmental projects.
This threat against humans’ existence needs the utmost remedy before the human race is swept into the abyss.