participation
7 September 2007
North West MEC for Developmental Local Government and Housing, Howard Yawa
has congratulated the youth from Maquassi Hills for refusing to be diverted
from focusing on development. This is after a successful youth development
summit was held in Wolmaranstadt on Thursday amid attempts by minority
groupings to ferment violence under the guise of service delivery protests in
order to undermine the legitimacy of Maquassi Hills Local Municipality.
In addressing the summit attended by over a hundred Youth from Tswelelang,
Lebaleng, Wolmaranstadt and Leeudoringstadt townships, MEC for Economic
Development and Tourism, Darkie Afrika committed his department to do all in
its power to assist agencies and other departments to put their efforts
together in order to create economies of scale that will make it easier,
cheaper and effective to service the youth in their transition to responsible
parenthood.
"In our country today, government has put in place mechanisms to empower
young people to face the challenges of a global demand driven economy and
amongst these are the establishment of Umsombovu Youth Fund, the National Youth
Service as well as the Youth Commission", said MEC Afrika, adding that the core
focus of these institutions was to facilitate formulation, alignment and
implementation of policies, programmes and resources to assist the youth in
need.
"If we have a clear vision, then the expectations is what we should then
establish partnership to share our youth vision and our potential partners are
all government departments, learning institutions, business enterprises, big
and small for them to connect youth in need to education opportunities and the
employment opportunities," said Afrika.
He said the reasonable approach was not simply to demand that every
programme must have an element of youth vision so that they can voluntarily
incorporate it in their operational strategies. Afrika cautioned the youth
against using protests as a mechanism to mobilise support. "More often than
not, these tactics end up destroying resources that we will need, destroying
potential partnership opportunities we desire, killing any confidence people
may have in our future parents", he added.
The summit was initiated by MEC Yawa as an intervention to address the high
unemployment level among the youth in the area and was aimed at encouraging the
youth to seize economic opportunities that government has made available. The
Southern District Municipality, Maquassi Hills Local Municipality and
Departments of Social Development, Transport Roads and Community Safety, Public
Works and the Small Enterprise Development Agency (Seda) also made
presentations on their programmes and co-sponsored the summit.
For further information contact:
Lesiba Moses Kgwele
Departmental Spokesperson
Tel: 018 387 3814
Cell: 083 629 1987
E-mail:LKgwele@nwpg.gov.za
Issued by: Department of Developmental Local Government and Housing, North
West Provincial Government
7 September 2007
