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BL Premium reports that the National Treasury, through its Jobs Fund initiative created to address the unemployment crisis, has launched its 11th call for proposals, inviting NGOs and the private and public sectors to submit innovative plans and projects that will create new jobs.
This latest call for proposals, which opened on 29 May, will prioritise industries that are labour absorptive, said Najwah Allie-Edries, head of the Jobs Fund and deputy director-general at the National Treasury. These including trade, focusing on installation, repair and maintenance; digital and technology communications; and the social services sector, especially those that focus on healthcare, early childhood development, education and elderly care. “The Jobs Fund operates as a ‘challenge fund’. This means it is a financing mechanism that uses competition to identify and support the best solutions to a predefined challenge, in this instance job creation. It aims to identify new ways of solving the challenge in a context where solutions do not yet exist.” Allie-Edries indicated. SA has one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, which currently sits at a staggering 32.9%. “While young people need work experience, they need to understand how to behave within the labour market. But, importantly, young people have other challenges and if you don’t address, for example, the psychosocial challenges that young people have, then you don’t create sufficient stickiness in the labour market. They face multiple deprivations,” Allie-Edries pointed out in an interview. The Jobs Fund was established in June 2011 and has become an important player in the country’s job creation landscape. Data shows that the fund and its partners have created more than 195,000 permanent jobs.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thuletho Zwane at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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