Adverse impact of Covid-19 on unemployed youths

The world is now struggling to combat the deadly coronavirus pandemic. The virus has already reached every corner of the world. In many cases, it is spreading at different paces and intensifying in other regions. The pandemic has brought severe adverse impact on every sector of the global economy as well as education and put the unemployed youth into deep trouble. Being a developing country, Bangladesh has been fighting to create adequate job opportunities for its people, including youth for long. Despite a remarkable economic growth in recent years, the country has yet to do so, raising questions about the quality of the growth. As Bangladesh is gradually moving forward to adapt to the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Artificial Intelligence (AI), a lot of manual workers have already started losing their jobs due to increased automation. And now the Covid-19 has intensified their woes.

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, newspapers have published a series of reports on job losses due to shutdown or slowdown of economic activities.  The job loss put a large number of young people into depression. The young job seekers are seen to pass their time with severe anxiety thinking the post-Covid-19 impact on the job market.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) 2019 report, the unemployment rate in Bangladesh is 4.19 per cent. Experts and economists are now predicting that the rate will jump in the coming years. According to a World Bank report, one of every three graduates remain unemployed in Bangladesh. Can we imagine the consequences of this unemployed youth after the pandemic?

The appearance of emerging technology, globalisation, and now Covid-19 has seismically disrupted labour markets for youths and their chances of right, long term and meaningful jobs. Our youth labour market is highly vulnerable to economic cycles. At the same time, the experts said the youth employment is going to hit more negatively by economic shocks in the period of economic downturn. As a result, many jobs have already vanished while the new jobs leave behind many young aspirants. According to a recent joint report of Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Labor Organization (ILO), the youth unemployment rate was 11.9 per cent in 2019 and likely to increase to 24.8 per cent this year in Asia and the Pacific. Unemployed youth are already falling into deep anxiety and depression, which drive them to loss behavioural and emotional control. Many of them have also become drug abusers. In an extreme case, a few even opt for committing suicide.

Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS), nowadays, has become considered as the most preferable and secured job for the youth regardless of their background as the country doesn't have sufficient placement in other standard job sectors. On December 31, 2019, Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) issued 41st BCS job circular, but the preliminary examination has remained postponed due to the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the academic life of the students will be a prolonged one. Though educational institutions have started online classes, the students are going to face acute session jam due to Covid-19. The deadly virus is now killing the age of many youth aspirants to build their career in government jobs, including the BCS. 

According to section 14 of BPSC Regulations, a general applicant must have an age limit of 30 to take part in the BCS examination, which is 32 years for children and grandchildren of freedom fighters. In this backdrop, government job seekers are in tensed about the age limit of BCS for which they are now demanding to increase the age limit, although the demand is nothing new. Over the years, university students have waged demonstration and conducted an advocacy campaign for raising the age limit. Recently, a writ petition was filed with High Court in this regard.  Moreover, many prospective BCS applicants, who have finished their studies, would likely to cross the maximum age threshold soon.

Age limit in a government job has remained a debatable issue for a long. Along with more than 150 countries, India and some other south Asian countries have raised the limit to 35 years for the entrance in government service.

The authorities have, however, assured that they would consider relaxing the age limit for applicants, who cross the threshold during the shutdown. A fresh circular will also be released. The question remains how the government will address the issue.

Bangladesh is committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 and moving forward to become a developed country by 2041. For that, the incumbent government is taking significant steps to ensure decent jobs for the youth by creating different job opportunities by wage-earning and self-employment. Against the backdrop of Covid19, the government needs to come forward to create a special department with the public service commission to evaluate the unprecedented situation and take appropriate steps in this regard. A reform in BCS recruitment system is necessary now, and the age limit can be considered at least for a particular period to combat this evolving coronavirus situation.

Nowshin Islam is a current student of University of Chittagong.

[email protected]