This news aggregator site highlights South African labour news from a wide range of internet and print sources. Each posting has a synopsis of the source article, together with a link or reference to the original. Postings cover the range of labour related matters from industrial relations to generalist human resources.
The Citizen reports that outgoing SA Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Blade Nzimande says SA is at a crossroads as it faces unprecedented youth unemployment, high levels of gender-based violence (GBV), a stagnant economy and a financial sector not keen on funding industrialisation.
He was addressing delegates at the15th SACP national congress in Boksburg. Nzimande said the answer to the country’s unemployment crisis lay with public employment programmes and “the right to work”. Noting that the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) had succeeded in achieving about one million work opportunities a year, with the Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) having led to the employment of 600,000 teacher assistants, Nzimande said many more interventions were required to address soaring joblessness numbers. “In the face of the massive unemployment crisis, these programmes need to be vastly expanded – including specific targeting of youth and women. Despite its successes, the PES programme in the most recent budget allocation has been cut by 10%, while unemployment has got worse. EPWP budgets have flat-lined, despite government’s very own national development plan 2030, calling for a tenfold increase in public employment,” Nzimande pointed out. He also argued that the time had come “to massively revitalise the financial sector campaign”. The congress, which will on Saturday elect a new SACP leadership, will on Friday be addressed by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Brian Sokutu at The Citizen
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page