Draft policy to get youth employed needs a rethink

THE GOVERNMENT acknowledges youth unemployment has reached crisis proportions.

The admission came in the form of a document, the new Draft National Youth policy for 2020-2030, which explains how the government plans to get more young South Africans into education and employment over the next decade.

Statistics SA data shows that 3.3 million of the 10.3 million persons aged 15 to 24 years (32.4%) were not in employment, education or training.

According to the policy, the government will look at “expanding and further analysing” the application of broad-based BEE to try to get young people into jobs.

Unfortunately, most of its proposals focus on using government departments to create employment and training opportunities.

These include growing the public service internship programme to create 60000 internship opportunities, a national campaign to place university students and graduates in state-owned companies for work experience, and all government departments having internship programmes.

Government departments, provinces and municipalities should be required to link the internship programme to their human resource development strategies to create a talent pool from which to recruit when vacancies are available.

On the education front, the policy calls for practical subjects such as entrepreneurship, technical skills and handwork (art) to be introduced at school for those who will not proceed to higher education, and ensuring that university graduates have experience when they qualify.

The draft policy asks too much of the government and will bloat the public service, which consumes 35% of the budget. The government cannot be expected to provide all the unemployed with jobs.

No easy task, but the government has to create the conditions for economic growth and encourage foreign investment, both of which will lead to the creation of jobs.

With the national unemployment rate sitting at just under 30%, more companies have warned of job losses. Massmart is set to cut more than 1 000 staff, and Telkom more than 3 000.

The Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the author of the document, must go back to the drawing board and rethink the policy.