Sessional Paper No. 10 of 1973 on Employment

Abstract

While this paper is intended to provide an official response to the recommendations in a report submitted by an International Labour Office/United Nations Development Programme (ILO/UNDP) Employment Mission to Kenya, the paper, in fact, has its origins in the National Assembly's Report of the Select Committee on Unemployment which was published in December, 1970. Members of the Select Committee, and those who have read its report, will find much that is familiar on the pages which follow. In particular, it will be seen that many of the committee's recommendations are set out as Government policy. Further, there is a close correspondence between the committee's understanding of the problems of unemployment and that understanding which is implicit in this paper. The ILO/UNDP Report entitled Employment, Incomes and Equality—a Strategy for increasing Productive Employment in Kenya, toward which this paper is specifically directed, has its origins in a desire on the part of the Government to exploit an unusual opportunity. That opportunity was afforded by the creation, in 1969, of the ILO World Employment Programme which involved, as part of the programme, the commissioning of three successive pilot country missions to study the causes of unemployment and to make recommendations as to what should be done about it. The first pilot mission was sent to Colombia and the second to Ceylon; when it was suggested that Kenya might wish to host the third pilot mission, the Government provided an immediate response with an official invitation to the World Employment Programme...