BL Premium reports that the EU has implored SA to address its unemployment scourge, which is among the highest in the world, to realise much-needed economic growth and create jobs.
This as government leaders warned that failure to address the crisis could ignite a “revolution” in a country where the unemployment rate in the first quarter increased to 32.9%. The youth unemployment rate reached 62.1% in the first quarter and 71.2% using the expanded definition. Addressing a jobs expo in Johannesburg on Thursday, which was attended by employment and labour minister Thulas Nxesi, EU ambassador to SA Sandra Kramer bemoaned the unemployment crisis in SA. “Unemployment, youth unemployment figures are extremely high and that is bad for the SA economy and society,” Kramer said. According to the EU, a number of interventions could be carried out to “improve that”. Kramer said a “space” should be created for small and medium-sized enterprises as they had potential to create job opportunities. Those entities, she said, needed oxygen to operate sufficiently and contribute to economic growth and they “do not need red tape.” Kramer also said the EU wanted to be the government’s partner in improving the employment figures. Delivering the keynote address at the expo, Nxesi admitted that youth unemployment was a “major challenge” and noted that young people remained vulnerable in the labour market and posed the “greatest risk to social instability in the country”. Characterising joblessness as a structural phenomenon, Nxesi said fixing the crisis should not be his department’s responsibility alone and that the private sector had a role to play.
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