Government/CESE: Squeaky wheel

Ahmed Réda Chami, President of the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Morocco, couldn’t have found a better person than the Head of Government to promote his latest report on the Neet, those young people who are neither in school, training nor employment. Indeed, Aziz Akhannouch cited the work of the CESE, made public on Wednesday morning, the day of the debate on its mid-term review in Parliament. However, he wondered about the timing of this release. Was it pure chance or intentional? This issue will be raised for the constitutional bodies, he hinted during his reply to the House of Councillors last Thursday. In any case, the Head of Government sought to put the matter in a positive light, giving him the benefit of the doubt. And by pointing out that this work was nothing new, since the subject was well known. The proof: before the last elections, the National Rally of Independents’ (RNI ‘s) «Chemin de la confiance» ( The road to confidence ) program had addressed these Neet issues. For the Head of Government, «what’s new is not talking about it, but finding solutions». In his view, the solutions put forward by the CESE are not convincing. The Government cannot apply them. In this respect, he recalled that he had not confined himself to diagnosis, but had proposed solutions, notably in the reform of the education system. Indeed, one of the goals is to reduce the school drop-out rate by a third, so that these young people do not leave school. To achieve this goal, the Government spoke of actions in the fields of transport, school canteens, boarding schools, the tutoring program, parallel activities, schools of excellence, etc. In addition, there is investment in second-chance schools, which already exist and need to be developed.

The Head of Government also mentioned coding, in particular the launch in the coming weeks of the Digital Morocco strategy, which will mobilize a large number of young people. As far as coding is concerned, the aim is to train 100,000 young people a year in the digital field, instead of 14,000 by 2022, he stressed, before moving on to set the target of employing 240,000 people in the digital sector in the future.
Furthermore, in times of crisis, it is imperative to boost employment among young people. To convince, the Head of Government gave the example of Awrach and Forsa, «two programs designed to get people moving to go to work, in a context marked by the freezing of the economy during the period of the Covid-1 pandemic». They were said to last no more than 2 years. Forsa ended last year. Awrach is shrinking, but has helped 50,000 young people find stable employment. The Forsa program benefited 21,000 companies and cooperatives.

Mohamed CHAOUI