We are here today during the cross-alive road safety campaign that is happening during the month of October, which is the month that is set aside by government, where we have Road Safety Awareness Campaigns throughout the country together with our entities.
This year our theme is “Together Moving South Africa Forward”. This theme summarizes what government is all about as we are accountable for service delivery.
This month is also set aside by the African National Congress to celebrate the life of the former President of the ANC, comrade Oliver Reginald Tambo.
OR Tambo dedicated his life to fight for our freedom and his legacy will live forever. We need to take examples form his way of living and be humble and be committed to reach our course in life.
In our country, we cannot talk to young people without referring to the youth of 1976 who sacrificed their youth and others sacrificed their lives to fight the education system to liberate the young people of South Africa.
On 16 June 1976, young men and women of your age mobilized and took a stand against the regime for using Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools.
The unselfish deeds of these young people have changed our country and your lives for the better.
38 years later, the girl child is still marginalized and suffers abuse and discrimination.
Girls are the most affected by discrimination because of the fact that they are young, female and vulnerable.
So, they are more susceptible to abuse and being taken advantage of.
Young women often become victims of events and situations that have nothing to do with them, which they sometimes do not understand.
We all know about the kidnapping of girls from a school in Nigeria. These kids have nothing to do with political conflicts, most of them probably do not know anything about politics but they became victims.
We have heard about the young Malala from Pakistan who was shot by the Taliban to try and shut her up from fighting for the right of girls to go to school. The good thing about Malala is that she is still fighting for the rights of girls.
In our own country, teenagers and young women are facing the problem of ukuthwala in the name of culture.
Girls are prevented from going to school and kidnapped by adult men to make them wives. It is said that some girls’ parents support this practice.
The socio-economic situation in which most young people find themselves has more impact on girls.
Poverty, unemployment, perceived lack of opportunities or knowledge, make them vulnerable as syndicates deceive them, promising them jobs around the world and they later find themselves being used as drug mules or sold for prostitution, hard labor and so on.
For a person to move from one country to another, or even from one place to another, she needs transportation.
Ours is the only sector that makes movement of people, goods and substances between two points possible.
We are at a risk of unscrupulous elements that abuse the transport industry for human trafficking, drug transportation and abuse of women.
The trucking industry has a bad reputation of servicing the prostitution industry, which mostly exploits thousands of children and teens.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to take this opportunity to encourage the young people present here today to do research into the many opportunities that are available within the transport sector.
Talk to these men and women who are here today, ask for their business cards and start to network with them.
Most of you have cellphones, do not use them to send videos of your schoolmates having sex or taking drugs, but use this technology to tweet about these people.
You can even use them as mentors and a good source of guidance.
There are many opportunities in the transport sector. We find for example, aviation, maritime, taxi industry, freight, rail – let us explore this industry and be future engineers, manufactures of these transport modes.
We need to manufacture or build trains, ships, aeroplanes, we cannot just depend on engineers from outside South Africa.
We can produce engineers here in our country and those engineers come from you.
This industry is mainly male dominated and it is about time that women should take it over.
I have no doubt that women will help shape Transport in this country and make it a career of choice.
The latest unemployment figures provided by Statistics South Africa indicate that young people are the most affected by joblessness.
In his State of the Nation Address on the 13th of February this year, the State President, Honourable Zuma raised concern about unemployment among youth and made a commitment for this government to introduce further measures to improve the situation in line with the Youth Employment Accord.
Internship opportunities are provided to expose young people to experiential training, which makes it easier for them to be incorporated into the work environment.
I would like to urge all CEO’s, HOD’s and management from both Government and Business sector to make internship opportunities available for young people in the Transport Sector.
Most importantly, information must be disseminated especially to rural communities and entry requirements be made user friendly for all.
This is the only way that we can invest in skills development, reduce unemployment and build the economy of our country.
Having said that, I have to emphasise that education remains key to economic development and availability of opportunities for young people.
As young people, you must actively fight drugs and substance abuse in schools and communities.
You also need to encourage road safety. Make sure that the transport that you are in is safe and road worthy; if you drive with someone who tweets or write sms, stop them and tell them that you cannot be a victim of road fatalities.
If your parents want to bribe the traffic officers, discourage them in doing that.
As I have also indicated above, that the transport industry is often targeted for the transit of drugs from one country to another.
You have heard of instances where even employees in aviation, trucking or rail services find themselves transporting drugs, sometimes unintentionally or unaware that they are doing it.
As young people, you must say no to drugs and report such activities to authorities so that together we can fight this evil amongst us.
I therefore wish to thank the C-BRTA women network who saw it fit to mobilise and focus on woman issues, particularly the empowerment of women and the girl child, not only within the agency but externally too.
In this way, we can all contribute, in our little efforts, towards the creation of a better life for all South Africans.
I thank you.
