In front of the Maison de la Presse in downtown Algiers, Algeria’s
capital, dozens of young men and women are protesting against the
government, again. Protests are forbidden by law in this north African
country and usually last only 30 minutes before the police arrive to
disperse the crowds.
“It’s enough! Give us back our rights!” they chant in Arabic as they
stand under the sun. Others carry placards that say “A staff job is a
right, not a favour! Yes to a staff job! No to the hogra!”
“Hogra means disdain, contempt, and that’s what we feel,
that’s what most young people feel here when they talk about their
future,” says Idriss Mekideche, 32, one of the demonstrators and
spokesman of the “pre-emploi”, a group affiliated with the independent national union of civil servants (known by its French initials, SNAPAP).
In Algeria, pre-emploi (“pre-employment” in French) is the
name given to temporary jobs offered by the Algerian government to young
graduates. These contracts, lasting at least three years, are part of
an effort to lower unemployment and to give graduates a chance to
acquire skills and experience. Across the nation, thousands of educated
young people are enrolled in this programme, working in low-level,
poorly-paid positions in public institutions such as schools, hospitals
or courts.
When he graduated with a degree in computer management, Hocine
Guonouch, 31, was offered a “pre-employment” position at a youth centre
in Algiers. “I didn’t find anything there, not a single computer in
sight!” he smiles. “I asked for another job and now I work in an
elementary school: I do some paper work, photocopies, I manage the
cafeteria.”
His friend, Rachid Cemchaoui, a 27-year-old with a law degree, landed a temporary job in a cultural centre where he works as a doorman and night guard.
“They gave me the keys, I was told, ‘You stay here, you watch who comes in and out’,” he quips.
Each and every one has a story to tell about the absurdity of a system
where job titles never match the positions offered, where law, medicine,
engineering and other graduates end up doing temporary low-skilled jobs
with low wages, between 10,000 and 15,000 dinars per month ($125 to
$200). In total, about 900,000 pre-emplois in Algeria hope for a
permanent job, ideally in their field of competence, according to the
SNAPAP-affiliated group. While they wait in limbo, others have no jobs
at all.
The government claims it has slashed unemployment from 30% in 2000 to
9.8% in 2013, according to the national statistics office (or ONS after
its initials in French). It boasts that it created 3.5m jobs between
1999 and 2008 through various programmes and agencies that train the
jobless, support the creation of new businesses with micro-loans, and
hand out temporary positions such as the pre-emploi. But many Algerians have little faith in these figures and slate the pre-emploi jobs as fake.
Despite the reduction in unemployment, 24.8% of young people under 25
were jobless in 2013, according to the national statistics office. Some
experts say the actual numbers may be as high as one out of three young
people without work.
Algeria’s population is young, with 58% of its 38.7m people under the
age of 30, according to the statistics office. These under-30s make up
69% of the country’s unemployed. Facing discontent and a high risk of
social explosion, the Algerian government is offering subsidies and
grants to young people. It has also created a national agency to support
youth employment and a fund to help young entrepreneurs who want to
start their own companies.
“The government has just spent a lot of money to buy social peace, with
no real strategy in the long run,” says Abdelouahab Fersaoui, president
of Rally for Youth Action, a national social and cultural association
that works with young people. “The regime has done everything to
marginalise the youth, to prevent young people from taking control of
their destiny. The state considers youth a subject, a problem to handle,
rather than a factor of development for the country.”
Many Algerians are so desperate that their anger boils over onto the
street. Protests, sit-ins and riots transpire almost daily across the
country. More than 6,500 demonstrations and 1,500 strikes took place in
Algeria in 2013, many initiated by young people, according to the
Algerian daily newspaper El-Watan.
Young people say they feel either ignored or scorned by their own
government. They see themselves as a doomed generation with no hope for
social justice. Many complain that their future has few options:
violence, exile or suicide. Some leave the country and sail over the
Mediterranean to Europe. They are known as the “harragas” (“those who emigrate” in Algeria’s Arab dialect). Others are so desperate, they self-immolate.
In recent years suicides and attempted suicides by self-immolation have
skyrocketed in Algeria, a copy-cat phenomenon after Muhammad Bouazizi, a
young street vendor in Tunisia, set himself on fire in December 2010
and sparked the Arab spring riots. Official statistics are not available
but local media listed more than a hundred self-immolations in 2013.
On March 20th, Fethi Manaa, 22, poured gas on himself in the village of
Hassi Labiod in the suburbs of the north-western city of Oran. He was
protesting an eviction notice from the home that he shared with eight
members of his family. His brother, Aissa Manaa, 29, tried to save him
but failed.
“The policemen who had come to evict us just watched him burn without
moving a finger,” he says. “This is not a proper state [with rule of
law]. Everything works with bribes. My brother died and it’s as if it
was just a cat that died. No one followed up on this case; no one cares
about him.”
Mr Manaa’s immolation led to street riots in the village where families
have been living in shanty houses since the country’s independence in
1962. In Hassi Labiod, as in the rest of the Algeria, the vast majority
of young people still live with their parents. They say they cannot
marry or raise a family for lack of decent wages and housing.
Kaddour Chouicha, bureau chief in Oran of the Algerian League for Human
Rights, complains about the inequality, corruption and clientelism in
the distribution of housing. “Housing is a major demand for people,” he
said. “Some have castles, others have nothing. People make requests,
they have no news for months or years, and then when the list of housing
beneficiaries is published, there are riots.”
After visiting Algeria in 2011, Raquel Rolnik, a UN housing expert,
criticised “the lack of citizens’ participation” in the allocation of
housing “as well as the scope of decision-making left to the
administration”.
The Algerian government has fast-tracked housing construction in a
series of three five-year plans that began in 2001. The goal of the
current programme is to build 2.2m housing units between 2010 and 2014.
As of last March, 827,000 had been completed, according to government
figures.
However, the government is struggling to keep up with Algeria’s
demographic boom, the rural exodus and natural disasters (the Bab El
Oued floods in 2001 or the Boumerdes earthquake in 2003). The country
needs 200,000 to 250,000 new housing units per year, according to the
Algerian housing ministry.
The new government nominated after Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s re-election
to the presidency last April has its work cut out to meet young people’s
demands for jobs and housing and to regain their trust. But for now,
the majority of young Algerians say they have no faith in their
politicians. “What’s the point of waking up in the morning knowing there
is repression and corruption, knowing that Algeria doesn’t have what it
deserves?” asks 21-year-old student Abdelouhab Merchiche. “Here in
Algeria, youths’ rights have become a dream.”
from here