Government will work with business and labour to tackle youth unemployment – Ramaphosa

Cyril Ramaphosa

JOHANNESBURG – A youth employment programme launched last week will help create young entrepreneurs, although it is not a panacea for South Africa’s chronic unemployment problem, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Monday.

In the latest edition of a weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said his government would continue to work with business, labour and civil society to ensure that “the burden of unemployment does not continue to weigh down our young people, crush their spirits and cause them to become despondent”.

The country’s official unemployment rate was unchanged at its previous record high of 29.1 percent of the labour force in the fourth quarter of 2019, Statistics South Africa said in a report last Tuesday.

The report, based on Stats SA’s latest quarterly labour force survey, showed that the percentage of young people aged 15 to 24 years who were not in employment, education or training increased from 31.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 to 32 percent in the last three months of 2019.

On Monday, Ramaphosa said the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention launched on the eve of his state of the nation address last Thursday was a strategic national plan which would prioritise action to tackle joblessness among young people.

Source: iol.co.za