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Nxesi eyes UIF and Compensation Fund for investment in job creation

Details

nxesiThe Sunday Independent reports that Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi is eyeing the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the Compensation Fund (CF) to help create and sustain jobs.  

Nxesi said the use of the two entities on job creation and preservation was the thinking as to the role of the reconfigured department.  “We will leverage the resources of the department and of our entities, which are our labour market instruments, the UIF and the Compensation Fund to preserve jobs and to invest in job creating initiatives,” he indicated.  The department’s director-general, Thobile Lamati, said the functions of the UIF and the CF were not just to pay out monies to workers who had lost jobs or to injured workers.  There was, Lamati said, a legal provision to access the funds to make them available for the labour market.  “The UIF has responsibility to invest in job creation initiatives.  These are used to make sure jobs are created and people are placed,” he indicated, adding that the use of the UIF and CF for job initiatives had always been there, but had not been amplified before.  Nxesi also wants to ensure that workers are reskilled and retrained for the job market and there will be vocational and remedial training for the unemployed and programmes for youth from school, apprenticeships and 130,000 learnerships over three years.  The UIF has budgeted R7.9 billion in the next three years in that regard.  The CF will contribute to fighting poverty and unemployment, with 10% of its R42bn surplus invested in high impact job creation business ventures across all sectors.

  • Read the full original of Siyabonga Mkhwanazi’s report in the above regard at Independent News


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