Government is doing all in its powers to ensure that South Africa’s youth is empowered through training in various skills that will better their prospects of employment in future.
This is the view of the Deputy Minister (DM) of the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), Pamela Tshwete.
DM Tshwete noted this when she unveiled DWS’s Unemployed Youth Skills Development Project in Vhembe District Municipality in Thohoyandou, Limpopo on Friday, 16 January 2015.
She said, “Today we are here to launch this Unemployed Youth Skills Development Project in Thohoyandou, together with the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the Vhembe District Municipality.”
The DM stressed that this kind of project will be rolled out throughout the country to ensure that South Africa adequately provides for the most needed skills in the administration and governance of our municipalities.
This programme is based on the provisions of the Freedom Charter, the Millennium Development Goals, the National Development Plan (NDP), the National Youth Skills Programme (NYSP), the Youth Policy Implementation Plan (YPIP), African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) Youth Development Strategy and many other youth focused policies aimed at empowering the youth.
All these initiatives are about skills development, job creation, fight against poverty, economic development, building better communities, provision of life skills, maintenance of the existing infrastructure and facilities, roll out of new infrastructure and ensuring functioning municipalities.
This initiative is anchored on the shoulders of many critical partners such as the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA), South African Local Government Association (SALGA), StatsSA, National Youth Skills Development Programme (NYSDP) and RUBBYTADT.
DWS seeks to produce water and sanitation specialists in the form of technicians, artisans, plumbers, metre readers, blue drop and green drop managers, community facilitators, water resource managers and security personnel, planners and installers of smart water and sanitation infrastructure out of this programme.
Deputy Minister Tshwete added that both beneficiaries – “that is, individual trainees and individual municipalities – must own this programme, and that individual trainees must recognise the fact that they have been selected from a very large pool of unemployed people in this country. “Secondly, the beneficiaries have been selected to service very needy communities. These two factors must instil in them a sense of responsibility and selfless service to the people and never be the reason for failure of this project,” the DM added.
The DM further pointed out that municipalities have a responsibility to embrace this developmental process and incorporate it as part of their annual Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). In addition to the resources provided by the Department of Public Works, individual municipalities must plan and budget for the ultimate takeover of this programme.
Communities, as direct beneficiaries of this programme, will have a much bigger responsibility of monitoring both individual trainees and individual municipalities in the implementation of this programme.
The community must ensure that trainees attend all their training sessions and are actually performing their duties when employed in the municipality. “The community must also ensure that this project runs smoothly by ensuring that the municipality implements this project according to the Service Level Agreement (SLA). For example the agreed stipend must be paid and be paid on time. Those who complete their training programme must be absorbed and the social life of the people in this area must change for the better,” Deputy Minister added.
Through this programme government ensures that people govern themselves, determine the pace of their development, improve the quality of services they receive, and selected youths contribute to economic development through Small Medium Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) and Cooperatives. “This tripartite relationship between the Vhembe District Municipality, Department of Public Works and ourselves as the Department of Water and Sanitation, must work for us all and indeed take our communities to another level,” the DM concluded.
For more information contact:
Sputnik Ratau
082 874 2942
