According to Statistics South Africa, the country’s unemployment rate increased to 32.9% from 32.1% last year. Picture: Phill Magakoe/AFP
As various political parties criss-cross the country campaigning for their respective parties and promising unemployed young people jobs, many of the youth have said they have lost hope in ever finding employment.
Dumisane Dlamini, a 29-year-old from Soweto, Johannesburg, said he had lost hope of ever finding employment.
Dlamini said in the past few years many people have lost their jobs due to Covid-19 and some have recently been retrenched by their respective employers.
“Now these politicians come to us and promise employment, whereas they are failing to protect the little ones (jobs) people had.
“These are just political gimmicks, they are playing with our emotions. The reality of the matter is that our government is slowly turning us into a socialist state,” said the 29-year-old Sowetan.
He believes that all the politicians who are swelling the streets of Soweto do not have a plan to create jobs, but, rather, are looking out for themselves by wanting their share of the seats in Parliament.
Lindiwe Fumba from Potchefstroom, in North West, told the publication that it is difficult for young people to get what she called “simple learnerships”.
Fumba said everyone in their town knows that you only get such opportunities if you are known by prominent figures. If not, you will stay unemployed forever.
“Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) jobs are also a challenge to get here, unless you belong to a certain ward and you are a card-carrying member of a certain organisation, then you can be lucky.
“I am an accountant, I studied accountancy at North West University, but look at me now. I used to work at one of the retail stores in town, but I was a casual, so they let me go. Now I am back to looking for employment once again,” she said.
Speaking to “Saturday Star”, labour expert Michael Bagraim said unemployment is indeed a major worry.
Bagraim said it is unfortunate that in some areas the levels of youth unemployment is almost 80%.
“This is vastly better in the Western Province, but it’s still not good enough. The Western Province is trying everything to ensure that youth are employed. They have introduced all sorts of schemes making this province better than all the others. Unfortunately, government has not created a conducive environment for businesses to create employment.
“It is common knowledge that the small business community has to do a lot more to create employment,” he explained.
Bagraim said government needs to ensure that it stops overregulating in the small business environment.
“I have a lot of hope and a great belief that when a new government comes into power from June 1, 2024, we will see much movement in the small business community.
“We cannot continue with business as usual. We must ensure that the stranglehold on the small business community is released. There is hope for the future.”
According to Statistics South Africa, the country’s unemployment rate increased by 0.8 percentage points to 32.9% from 32.1% in the fourth quarter of last year.
Statistician-general Risenga Maluleka said the Quarterly Labor Force Survey (QLFS) indicates that the number of employed persons increased by 22,000 to 16.7 million in the first quarter of this year compared to the fourth quarter of last year.
Maluleke further said that the number of people out of jobs surged by 330,000 to 8.2 million during the same quarter.
He explained that employment losses were mostly observed in the community and social services sector, which saw a decrease of 122,000 jobs.
The sluggish construction sector recorded 106,000 job losses, followed by the finance sector with 50,000 and utilities with 17,000.
Saturday Star
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