How to Come Out of the Social Crisis in Tunisia?

Tunisia has recently known a surge in demonstrations and social outcry following the suicide of young Ridha Yahyaoui which came after the results of a competition for a civil service position were announced.

The protests erupted in the city of Kasserine before spreading to the rest of the country, particularly to inland regions. These social movements have been marked by acts of violence, theft and destruction of public goods. This could have led our nation into the unknown and jeopardize the democratic transition without the intervention of security forces and calls from the civil society to demonstrate peacefully and to protect public buildings as well as private property.

Of course, these protests had to be expected. The most recent polls that surveyed the consequences of the revolution outlined gains for democracy such as freedoms and pluralism, but also indicated that the economy, marginality and social inequalities greatly suffered from the ongoing transition. Indeed, unemployment rate is still high, especially for new graduates. Economic growth continues to be slow and fragile. And discrepancies between inland and coastal regions remain very significant as shown by United Nations statistics and studies about human development. Those poor results in the achievement of objectives and expected outcomes of the revolution are the main reasons explaining current disappointment and mostly, rupture attempts by young people, who are being exploited by terrorist groups and other merchants of illusions, death or destruction.

Those events and their level of mobilization gave way to a major public debate about the limits of the transition process and its incapacity to create hope. But this debate didn’t yield enough suggestions for ways to exit the actual crisis.

In the meantime, it has become critical to look at the ongoing situation in order to articulate solutions and shed light on the current transition process. We must urgently address the crisis, create openings and breathe new life in the transition process.

In this column, we would like to put forward a series of proposals that will contribute to relieve distress and lead to renewed hope.

We opted for five short-term solutions to recover from the actual crisis.

The first one consists in a new initiative in the field of employment, which contradicts the current approach focusing on public service and relying on the capacity of the state to take charge of the unemployed. These methods have shown their limits to this day and haven’t solved the issue of unemployment among graduates which remains desperately high, with numbers topping 200,000 or 35% of all job seekers. What we are suggesting, which has been put forward by the Central Bank Governor in different meetings, is for Tunisian companies to take over the unemployed by offering them training and pre-employment contracts, in the context of a vast initiative for employment. This initiative should benefit from the support of public authorities especially when it comes to interns and future workers’ contributions.

The second proposal addresses investments in inland regions. On this level, we need to follow the example of a private Tunisian group which opened a production unit in Sidi Bouzid and other groups who would be getting ready to do the same in other regions, notably in Kasserine. We are suggesting on this level a massive investment operation in areas where public authorities are going to support the injection of funds by large Tunisian corporations.

The third proposal regards the creation of a guarantee fund dedicated to young entrepreneurs who would like to develop their own projects. Very often, young people do not dispose of sufficient guarantees to access the financing they need. This fund will allow banks and other financial institutions to play a more dynamic role in supporting those entrepreneurs realizing their business plan.

The fourth proposition focuses on upgrading basic infrastructure in the inland regions, especially in education and health. Recent tragic incidents in some hospitals including in maternal health wards, are a reminder of the state of our health services in those regions. In this regard, we are suggesting to develop a national upgrading plan for basic infrastructure in this domain and to provide the population with basic health care.

The final proposition applies to the development of an emergency training strategy facilitating the integration of youth in the productive system. It would include levelling up graduates’ skills in order to encourage their recruitment. For others, it would mean giving them a profession that would help them integrate the training scheme.

This emergency plan will allow Tunisian youth to regain a sense of hope in the inland regions. But it must be supported by a true programme in a medium-term perspective to transform the economy and bring our country back on the road to economic recovery and emergence.

Hakim Ben Hammouda