The Department of Labour has through its entities - The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the Compensation Fund (CF) - contributed immensely towards job creation by investing billions of rands in the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), labour Minister, Mildred Oliphant, told a meeting in Kievitskroon, north of Pretoria today (Thursday).
She was addressing about 100 managers of the department from all provinces at the departmental evaluation workshop.
“The UIF has invested 68 percent that is R35 billion out of its R52 billion in commercial social responsible investment portfolio that includes central government, municipalities and parastatal bonds and money market instrument that infrastructure projects that create and sustain jobs. Similarly, the CF invested in excess of R27 billion as at the end of March 2011 in compensation fund reserves with the PIC.
These funds are in turn invested by the PIC through an investment agreement in commercial and social responsible projects carried out by Standard Bank, Eskom, Transnet and other parastatals involved in infrastructure projects that contribute to employment creation.
The Minister told her team that “the challenge is that the number of jobs created in these interventions is often reported by loan recipient organisation instead of the main funder, the Department of Labour.’’
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