Growing numbers of employers are using the Department of Labour’s Public Employment Services (PES) to source their labour, a workshop was told in Kempton Park on Monday.
Sam Morotoba, the Deputy Director-General for PES, was addressing a South Africa-Germany Workshop on Labour Market issues at Emperor’s Palace.
The meeting between the two parties goes back to 1995 when a bi-national commission between the two countries was launched.
"As we are competing for the market with other private employment agencies, we have to acknowledge that it is still the medium and blue collar workers who are being sourced from our database. In high skills market, employers are still using the private employment services,” he said.
Morotoba said a total of 1,5 million young people were registered on the Department of Labour’s database. He acknowledged that of this number, almost 40 percent have find it difficult to be placed in formal employment.
“Increasingly, they are becoming despondent. This issue is under discussion among the G-20 member states”.
Markus Loebbert, head of the German delegation, said 55 percent of youth within European Union were unemployed and PES has been identified as an effective tool to address this crisis.
“The European Union has allocated 6 billion Euros to fight the scourge of youth unemployment,” he said.
Turning to Occupational Health and Safety, Loebbert said this was a core aspect of social protection. According to Loebbert, Occupational Health and safety includes the prevention of accidents at work, occupational diseases and work-related health hazards; adapting work to the worker; organisation of working time; protection of special groups of people and safe product design.
The three-day workshop will among others, deal with the overview of the South African labour market system with the focus on the current labour reforms as well as introduction to the current situation in Germany.
Enquiries:
Page Boikanyo
Departmental Spokesperson
Cell: 082 809 3195
