(From right)ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru, Kisumu County Executive Member of ICT, Information Principal Secretary Sammy Itemere and Arts and culture Principal Secretary Joe Okudo follow proceedings during the Ajira training at Tom Mboya Labour Collage in May 2017. Youth have been urged to examine online jobs before undertaking them.Photo: Roberto Muyela
The youth have been urged to be cautious when enrolling for online jobs to avoid being duped into the current upsurge of online scams.
Kisumu County Executive Member in charge of Communication, Information and Technology Michael Onyango said that some fraudulent advertisers have infiltrated the field to lure unsuspecting youth.
Onyango called on youth who are currently undertaking online jobs to be wary of pyramid schemes which he revealed advertised excessively high salaries to their potential clients but were fraudsters.
The County Minister observed that due to poverty and the greed for quick earned money, many youth in the County had invested a lot of money and time into online ventures only to realize they were ploys to defraud them.
“Young people want easy money and investments that yield results without work or by just few strokes on the computer keyboard. There is no such thing as money without sweat tears,” added the ICT official.
The youth, he said, must vet carefully any website links to online based jobs shared via social media adding that they should be skeptical of any web-based platform that promised them extraordinary values of money.
It is in this light that the ICT County Minister advised anyone who wanted to work online to seek professional advice before commencing such ventures.
“Find a trained Ajira Digital graduate who was part of the training program since they have loads of information on what to do and how to start online work. If you are in Kisumu Town visit the office of Director of Technology and Innovation for counsel,” he advised.
Anyone who wants to work online, he said, should log on www.upwork.com urging that it is a genuine site that paid its workers.
He nonetheless underscored the fact that genuine online jobs were lucrative citing that he had knowledge of online workers who were earning up-to Ksh.18000 weekly.
The Ministry of ICT has rolled out Ajira program and has so far trained about 10,000 youth to do online work across the country.
The move is aimed at cutting on high unemployment rate in the country and ease pressure on the demand of dwindling jobs in the formal employment sector.