Every single year, an estimated one million young Kenyans join the job market, adding even further congestion to the already bloated population of unemployed youth.
An alleged recent drive by a recruitment agency at a popular hotel along Mombasa Road to reportedly fill several open positions showed just how dire the situation in the country is for the youth.
Eka hotel has since moved to clear the air on the rumours going around that the hundreds who trooped to their premises were there looking to fill out 5 job posts.
"We would like to clarify reports that Eka Hotel has advertised for 5 vacancies are not true. Contrary to these reports, it was one of our clients, a recruitment agency that was conducting interviews from the hotel seeking quite some more," an excerpt of their statement disclosed.
Hundreds of young Kenyans turned up at the hotel to hand in their resumes and hope for the best, battling long queues in the process.
An aerial photo of the crowd went viral across various social media platforms with thousands of netizens using it as an opportunity to tackle the issue of unemployment in the country.
Reports from a survey carried out by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) released in March 2018 claimed that Kenya’s employed and unemployed together made up a labour force of 19,311,500 people.
To get the unemployment rate, the agency calculated the number of unemployed people (1,435,800) as a percentage of the total labour force (7.4%).
"Few are willing to resign. There are so many in the government and even the private sector with successful businesses out there. I have seen someone fight for his contract to be renewed despite his ventures doing well," Marco Mururu posted.
The aforementioned study further indicated that 3.7 million of the employed persons in the working age population were underemployed, meaning they were available to work for more hours but were not granted the opportunity.
"The saddest part is that the five have already been hired, this is just a formality. This is Kenya!" Patrick Sigei posted.
A human development report study carried out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released in March 2017claimed Kenya’s unemployment rate stood at 9.2% citing the International Labor Organization as its source.
Here is the video of the countless youth who turned up at the Hotel:
