Change needed for jobs

THE Quarterly Labour Force Survey for the first quarter of 2018 (January to March) was released by Statistics South Africa on Tuesday.

The Eastern Cape remains the province with the highest unemployment rate in the country.

According to the latest survey, unemployment in the province increased to 35.6 % from 35.1% in the fourth quarter of 2017 (October to December).

The hardship of unemployment is made so much worse when people can no longer trust their government to turn the situation around.

The service delivery protests that have been sweeping our province are a telling sign of this desperation.

Without economic growth and a lack of will to cut out corruption, we get chaos and disorder.

This means that an additional 17 000 people are now unemployed, the total rising to 771 000 in our province, according to the official unemployment rate. The expanded rate of unemployment is catastrophic, showing an increase of 1.2 percentage points, from 44.8% in the last quarter of 2017 to 46.0% in the first quarter of 2018.

We welcome the slight decrease of 0.6 percentage points in the unemployment rate in the DA-led Nelson Mandela Bay metro, from 36.9% to 36.3%.

Our efforts in NMBM to cut the rot and corruption are bearing fruit.

We need to put our country and our province on a path of change that will result in jobs being created.

A DA-led provincial government can do just that, by getting rid of the red tape, firing failing officials and, above all, providing political leadership that investors and the people can trust.

Bobby Stevenson, MPL, DA Shadow MEC for Finance, Bhisho