Programme Director
Honourable Ministers Nkwinti, Patel, Davis, Molewa and Deputy Ministers Thabethe, Mkhize and Cronje
Honourable Premier of the Eastern Cape Ms Kiviet and Members of your Executive Council, Honourable Mkhize Premier of KwaZulu-Natal
Leadership of our Municipalities
Leadership of Business and Labour representatives
CEOs and representatives of the various Institutions of Learning, government agencies
Representatives of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentleman
Good morning.
Amongst the many letters I receive on a daily basis, I chose that of Thuli from Mdantsane. Thuli is a 25 year old unemployed single mother of two, currently staying with her unemployed 22 year old brother and a sick mother. She left school after her Grade 12 and has been looking for employment ever since. Her brother dropped out of school when he was in Grade 7 and has been in and out of prison on various housebreaking and other related criminal incidents.
Their home electricity was disconnected two years ago due to non-payment of services and the accumulated debt is currently with the municipality debt collectors.
To supplement the Social Grants income that she receives towards her two children, Thuli does odd jobs whenever she manages to secure one. Her plea when she wrote to me was to assist her to secure a job. Her request touched my heart, It sounded so simple and yet remain very complex to resolve.
Thuli is amongst the hundreds of thousands of the unemployed in the Province. She is part of the 28.3% unemployed people in the Eastern Cape Province, which is the third highest, only exceeded by Mpumalanga and Free State provinces, she is part of the more than 70% of the unemployed Youth in the province. The labour force participation rate stands at a meagre 57.8% in this province.
In South Africa today, there are more than 3,9 million young people who find themselves in very similar situation like Thuli. She is amongst the more than 200 million young people worldwide who are not likely to secure employment within the next year.
Programme Director,
Thuli is but one of the many young people who are fast loosing hope, young people who are beginning to think that there is no reason to live.
These are young people who are leading service delivery protests in various parts of our country and in other nations.
There are other big countries such as Germany that have done exceptionally well in addressing the plight of their youth and it does not cause any harm to learn or borrow from their recipe.
As a country, we have introduced a range of interventions that often run in competition against each other with minimal impact. We are known to be amongst the best in designing comprehensive strategies. We continue to experience very serious policy coherence challenges and have a daunting internal coordination and implementation challenge. At the end, young people like Thuli, continue to loose out in the process and get more frustrated each day.
Policy coherence and an integrated approach in dealing with Macro Economic and Social issues is very important if we are to succeed. Countries that are recovering from the devastating effects of the global recession experienced during the last 4 years, are successfully adopting this approach.
The advent of the New Growth Path driven by the Minister of Economic Development, the Industrial Policy Action Plan driven by the Minister of Trade and Industry, the revamp of Public Employment services located in my department, are part of government to enhance better and intergrated approach to dealing with economic and social challenges confronting all of us.
It is my sincere belief that not a single one of us, be it at local, provincial or national level, is likely to win the battle against poverty, inequality and unemployment working alone in our different corners. Government is not a Comrades Marathon where thousands of athletes participates but only one wins, and people still say it was a success. To address Thuli’s problems and thousands others in her situation and the plight of our people, we need to learn to work together if we want to go far.
It is for these reasons Premier, that I instructed my officials, to move our Job Fair date, that was initially planned for the 1st of June to the 7 and 8 June. Having looked at your plans and programme, I believed that there was a good case to enter into a Partnership with the Provincial government of the Eastern cape, to make sure that as we explore macro strategies that we can implement to create employment, we at the same time provide Thuli and others like her, an opportunity to meet employers, institutions and various agencies, to equip her with the tools, information, skills and knowhow to catch this elusive employment fish. We want to assist her to find a Job to address her Future.
Addressing unemployment and especially amongst our youth, is central towards attaining social and economic stability including attainment of internationally agreed poverty reduction targets as outlined in the Millennium Development Goals. I am the Minister of Labour and my colleagues elsewhere are Ministers of Labour, Employment and Social Security. I am glad that the President choose to make all of us, Ministers, Premiers, MECs, Mayors, CEOs of Employment.
Programme Director, my department’s has a number of initiatives that contribute to the work of the Ministers in the Economic Sector and Employment Cluster to achieve Outcome 4 Objectives of Contributing to the creation of decent employment through inclusive economic growth.
Our interventions that are assisting government to respond to its strategic priorities include Decent work, Public Employment Services supported by our active labour market institutions, Inspection and Enforcement Services to effectively monitor and enforce compliance with our labour legislation.
To achieve these goals we are promulgating a number of amendments to our existing labour legislation, in order to promote labour market flexibility, to ensure competitiveness of enterprises and at the same time to also achieve a balance in promoting decent employment. We acknowledge that fair and speedy labour justice is indispensable to sound industrial peace and favourable climate for investment. We are processing these Bills without compromising social dialogue in the process.
We have realigned our Active Labour Market entities such as the Unemployment Insurance Fund, the Compensation Fund, Productivity South Africa, sheltered employment factories, the CCMA and departmental programmes to work seamlessly to amongst others:
- ensure that we assist companies to develop turn around strategies to increase productivity levels and to absorb more workers and pay better salaries,
- save companies facing possible closures and reduction in employment levels,
- intervene through short term and training lay-off measures in companies faced with retrenchments,
- resolve industrial disputes and maintain industrial peace including re-instatement of those unfairly dismissed,
- provide income relief whilst work seekers search for alternative employment or participate in skills programs,
- assist new entrance and retrenched workers with careers information, counselling and placement,
- assist those injured on duty or those who suffered occupational deceases through rehabilitation and re-integration strategies or with assistive devices.
- Provide employment to special category of people with disabilities who find it very difficult to be integrated into mainstream employment
- Promote employment equity in the labour market with a special focus on black people, youth, woman and people with disabilities.
In our Strategic Plan for 2012/17, I have committed my department to “Reducing unemployment by registering and placing unemployed people in skills development opportunities and decent work through:
- Registration of at least 600 000 work-seekers on the Employment Services System SA (ESSA) by March 2013.
- Increasing the number of employers registering their skills development opportunities and vacancies on ESSA from 2 000 to 3 000 by March 2013.
- Ensuring that of the 600 000 registered on Economic Society of South Africa (ESSA) at least 450 000 work-seekers are placed in opportunities or provided with other Department of Labour (DoL) services within 30 days of registration.
- Supporting a multi-pronged strategy to reduce unemployment of youth, women and people with disability through employment enhancement schemes, counselling and life skills, subsidies and sheltered employment.
- Work closely with the Unemployment Insurance Fund, the Compensation Fund, Productivity SA, Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) in the implementation of the Training Lay-off scheme, Social Plan Interventions, Rehabilitation programmes, Turn Around Strategies to save jobs and to promote return to work interventions.
- Promoting local employment through recommendations to Home Affairs to issue work or corporate Visas only in those instances where there are no suitable SA citizens or legal immigrants for the job.
The Job Fairs that we having throughout the country, are targeting the unemployed youth who dropped out school, unemployed youth with school exit certificates, unemployed graduates, workers who are under employed and retrenched workers.
The Job Fair aims to empower the unemployed with soft skills, information and face to face search for placement opportunities be they further learning, self- employment, co-operatives, Community Works or Public Works Programmes and formal employment.
Through these Job Fairs we intend to:
- Established partnerships with provincial employers and other organisations in the recruitment and placement of work-seekers.
- Empower work-seekers with appropriate information and tool kits to secure learning placement opportunity or employment.
- Increased number of people engaged in various economic activities.
- Shorten turnaround times in filling vacancies and uptake in available placement opportunities.
- Reduced number of retrenched workers drawing Unemployment Insurance Benefits.
- Possible alternatives for people affected by workplace injuries and diseases.
- To have a comprehensive data base of every unemployed person in our country.
Each Provincial Job Fair will be followed by a series of similar but smaller scale events in each of our Labour Centres, Thusong Centres and visiting points that we operate from.
To conclude, let me share with you some of the work-in-progress and highlights;
In the Province of the Eastern Cape alone, during the period1st April 2011 to 31st March 2012, in our 16 Labour Centres and through vigorous interaction with other department and stakeholders we managed to achieve the following:
- 36 227 job seekers were registered on ESSA
- 18 255 job seekers were provided with career guidance and employability enhancement skills.
- 14 983 job seekers were referred to institutions with opportunities
- 4 217 job seekers were successfully placed in employment manufacturing, electrical, construction, wholesale & retail and social & fnancial sectors. As we are gathered here, my officials have invited a number of key and strategic employers and institutions to assist us to achieve these objectives.
- These include: Transnet, Burmeisters, Masiqhame, Candy Tops, Ford Company, General Motor SA, Statistics SA; Nyandeni Development Trust, COEGA, Department of Health, East London IDZ; SETAs and Colleges. These are organisations that have used our services previously to recruit work-seekers at no cost. We have invited them to come and see if they cannot find additional people that they need.
Our biggest challenge though remains the high number of youth on our data base with very lower levels of skills that make it very difficult to secure successful placement in either employment or learning institutions. It is my belief that with the passage of the Employment Services Bill, we will also have employment schemes that will address their plight.
Together we can do more to address the challenge of unemployment in general and youth unemployment in particular.
I encourage all of you to visit the Jobs Fair in the basement and give us your thoughts and tips on how we can improve on this.
I Thank You.
