The Department of Labour (DoL) has managed to refer/place 96 505 work seekers into job opportunities through its Public Employment Services (PES) using its placement electronic platform, the Employment Services for South Africa (ESSA), in the past year.
Department of Labour Director-General Nkosinathi Nhleko told members of the Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Labour in Parliament today, that the achievement of progress and non-progress was determined by economic factors at play.
“We operate within a broader macroeconomic environment. The volume of placements depend on the availability of vacancies in the economy. We are also faced with another constraint that people who are profiled could not be successfully matched. This places a constraint. There has to be a broader collaboration with all players in the economic sphere on how we up-skill people with relevant expertise and make them relevant in the job market,” Nhleko said.
ESSA is an electronic platform which the DoL uses through the Public Employment Services branch uses to link job seekers and employers. The Essa has built a profiled database of 600 000 job seekers on its system. The system managed to ensure that 50% job-seekers registering on the system are assessed and profiled within 60 days of registration.
The provincial breakdown of placements is as follows: Eastern Cape (15 483); Free State (8 133); Gauteng Province 19 452; KwaZulu-Natal (8 659); Limpopo (9 627); Mpumalanga (11 077); Northern Cape (3 622); North West (11 077); and the Western Cape (96 505).
The department had set itself a target to register 600 000 job seekers on ESSA, however managed to register 553 883. The placement target was 450 000, and had to be revised as it included people who undergo counselling, career advice and those that seek assistance on the department’s other services.
In addition to job seekers' placement, as part of job creation initiatives DoL’s Public Employment Services branch is hosting Jobs Fairs. To date DoL’s PES has hosted Jobs Fairs in Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape and Limpopo.
Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant is to play host to various Jobs Fairs in Gauteng, North West, Western Cape and Mpumalanga. The Department uses the Jobs Fairs to register job seekers and enable prospective job seekers to meet prospective employers.
To date, the number of employers registering vacancies on ESSA stood at 2 475, exceeding the 2000 target set by the department in the period under review.
The department through PES has also managed to register 1 162 private employment agencies (PEA) up to the end of March 2012.
Meanwhile, Nhleko took an opportunity to announce that the department had managed to save through its social plan interventions 15 165 jobs, falling marginally to a set target of 20 000.
This was through money spent by its public entity the Unemployment Insurance Fund in Training Lay-Off Scheme. The scheme is aimed at distressed companies due to the economic conditions and at workers who may be at risk of retrenchment.
Through the Training Lay-Off scheme workers agree to forgo their normal wage to attend training programmes and to accept a training allowance during this period. Employers gain a financial recovery period by reducing payroll costs for a period and improve the skills levels of their workers at limited costs to the company.
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Labour DG Nkosinathi Nhleko says DoL’s Public Employment Services places thousands in job opportunities
