Programme Director, Minister Ebrahim Patel;
Ministers;
The Premiers of Gauteng and the Eastern Cape Provinces, Nomvula Mokonyane and Noxolo Kiviet;
MECs;
Leaders of the Trade Union Federations;
Leaders of Organised Business;
Leaders from the Community Organisations;
Youth Leaders from Formations Represented at Nedlac;
Ladies and gentlemen;
Thank you for the opportunity to address the launch of the Youth Employment Accord, a historic step in our determination to improve the lives of our people, especially the youth of our country.
In view of the continued challenge of youth unemployment in our country, President Jacob Zuma made a call on social partners in June last year to speed up the talks on youth employment at Nedlac.
In this regard, we are pleased that all the parties met in August last year and agreed on key principles that would guide their dialogue.
By February this year, the parties had signed off on the text of the Accord and today we launch the youth employment strategy that commits the major players in the economy and the organisations of young people to a real and concrete partnership.
Only collaboration and cooperation between the youth themselves, government, business and labour can address the challenges we face around joblessness. On the one hand, all of these stakeholders have key roles to play in growing employment opportunities.
On the other, long-run economic development and growth, which is a core interest for all these parties, can only be sustained if more people, and especially more young people, see the benefits. None of us can hope for a peaceful, united and prosperous South Africa unless we work together.
In the Accord, the social partners recall the joint commitment they have made to work with government to achieve five million new jobs by 2020.
The approach to youth employment is based on the common recognition by our social partners that more jobs need to be created to ensure that the total number of South Africans employed is significantly stepped up.
The benefits will reach many more people through sustainable, decent work opportunities and in this we will avoid youth employment schemes that simply displace older workers.
I want to stress the urgency with which we need to carry out this task. We have agreed that a comprehensive strategy is necessary to achieve this.
Such a strategy will require that the structural challenges in the economy are addressed, including poor skills, weak infrastructure, monopolies and cartels and lack of partnerships at workplace level.
The Youth Employment Accord has six commitments.
The first is on education and training. It commits in particular to improve education and training opportunities for the gap grouping between school-leaving and first employment.
The second commitment is on work exposure, to connect young people with employment opportunities, through support for job placement schemes and work-readiness promotion programmes for young school leavers that provide young people with work experience.
The third commitment is to strengthen measures that increase the number of young people employed in the public sector, through co-ordinating and scaling up existing programmes under a ‘youth brigade’ programme co-ordinated with the National Youth Service Programme.
The fourth commitment is to youth target set-asides in particular industries, particularly new industries where young people can be drawn in large numbers and should be progressively realised.
This include clear targets for new jobs in areas such as infrastructure, the business process services sector and the green economy, particularly the manufacture, installation and maintenance of solar water heaters.
The fifth commitment is to youth entrepreneurship and youth co-operatives. Public agencies such as Small Enterprise Finance Agency, Small Enterprise Development Agency and the Jobs Fund will be encouraged to develop and strengthen dedicated programmes of support for youth enterprises and youth cooperations.
The sixth commitment is to develop private sector measures to expand the intake of young people, with targeted youth support and incentives approved by all constituencies. It is important to improve private-sector youth absorption given that most sustainable new jobs are expected to be created in the private sector.
Business organisations have endorsed the youth employment strategy as a practical and concrete way in which partnerships can be developed. They will undertake discussions within their structures to identify specific actions that can be taken to improve youth employment and announce these shortly.
We wish to complete all the preparatory work so that programmes can be announced between today and June this year, which is National Youth Month. In order to show serious intent, some signatories have already commenced actions and commitments.
The Industrial Development Corporation has agreed to set aside R1 billion of its ‘Gro-E’ funding scheme to make low-interest rate loans available to youth-owned or youth-focussed enterprises over the next three years.
The IDC will also provide technical support to young people to assist in accessing these funds and will refer them to other support available in the state.
The Green Paper on Higher Education and Skills Development sets ambitious targets for expanding Further Education Training and Higher Education Training attendance. By 2030, university enrolments should have increased to 1, 5 million, or 23% of people in the relevant ages, up from 900 000 today, which is only a 16% participation rate.
To help achieve these targets, we are building two new universities and expanding the capacity of existing institutions. Under the National Infrastructure Plan, we are focusing on lecture rooms, student accommodation, libraries and laboratories as well as ICT connectivity.
These investments should feed into development of university towns with combination of facilities from residence, retail, recreation and transport. We are also going to establish community education and training centres, with the required infrastructure.
In addition we are working to improve general education both by upgrading educators and materials, and by improving school buildings across the country. Under the school upgrading programme we are currently tracking over 500 schools countrywide.
Provincial programmes will need to target youth employment more clearly. Today we can point to our host province for this launch, Gauteng, as an example of clear and successful actions on youth employment.
Gauteng has developed a provincial Youth Employment Strategy that identifies the plight of young people in the urban areas as a priority for development and therefore seeks to develop youth owned economic hubs.
They are working with municipalities in identification of these hubs as centres of business activities in urban communities. Through the Gauteng Department of Economic Development, they plan to develop three types of hubs in the first phase. These will include Automotive Hub; Enterprise Hub; and Industrial Hub.
These efforts from Gauteng will assist in implementing the fifth element of this accord: i.e. Youth entrepreneurship development where we can encourage youth to start business that can employ other young people.
But an Accord is more than the actions that will be taken by the state.
The other constituents are part of these commitments. In this regard, I am pleased to note the commitment by the Motsepe Foundation to make R100m available over the next 3 to 5 years for youth co-operatives and enterprises, and a further R100m for education which of course will benefit youth mainly, as part of attempts to bring young people into the economic mainstream.
Companies in the financial sector, through the Harambee programme as well as an initiative of KPMG are helping to implement aspects of the Accord. The Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator will have placed 3 000 young people in entry-level work by the middle of this year, with a target of 10 000 by the end of 2014.
We call on other business people to follow these examples of putting money and commitments on the table. We must do this together if we are to succeed.
The labour movement, represented by COSATU, FEDUSA and NACTU, has also endorsed the accord as a comprehensive response to the youth employment challenge.
To that end, the labour movement committed to assisting young people with internships and learnerships; bursaries, direct employment within the unions as well as opportunities for youth projects through the Job Creation Trust.
Finally we welcome the participation of a number of youth organisations in negotiating this Accord, with the concomitant commitments to support its implementation.
The South African Youth Council (SAYC) together with a number of its constituent organisations, were actively involved in the drafting of the Accord. In the implementation of this Accord, SAYC and its members will help to mobilize young people to access the opportunities opened up by the Accord.
While on the issue of youth, let me also remind all of us that this historic development occurs on the same day that marks the death of Enoch Sontonga 108 years ago, the composer of Nkosi Sikeleli Africa, a song synonymous with the quest for freedom and justice from here up to Tanzania.
It is also happening two months before we mark the 37th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising, popularly known as June 16. Looked at through the historical lens, our current effort to empower our young people gives effect to the ideals for which Enoch Sontonga and the youth of our country lived and died for.
I am pleased to now hand over to our Programme Director, Minister Patel who with Minister Chabane will direct us on the signing of the Accord.
I thank you.
