Job seekers march on municipality
FIVE months after presenting a memorandum challenging the city to address the issue of local inclusiveness pertaining to job and business opportunities, North Coast Workers' Forum (NCWF) members were back at uMhlathuze Municipality seeking engagement.
Supported by KZN Simunye Business Forum, hundreds of job seekers joined Thursday's peaceful march to the municipal offices to engage with the city's leadership and officials.
NCWF director Wiseman Ndlovu said the peaceful engagement was not to undermine the new leadership of the City of uMhlathuze, but to bring forth concerns raised by local job seekers and small businesses, and work together to find solutions.
'We want to work with the city to address the issue of unemployment and have discussions on how we can improve the lives of local people,' said Ndlovu.
'We want skills development to be prioritised as well.
'We have a highly-skilled labour workforce on our database, but we always experience the same challenge of only being told about positions of 'general workers'.
'We presented our memorandum to the city on 25 October. Since then there has been a change of guard and we want the city's new leadership to look at the challenges we face and help find solutions.'
NCWF raised concerns that the City of uMhlathuze is under development and more job opportunities should be available, however, there are none.
'We want the authorities to intervene and help put a stop to the labour force being brought in from elsewhere for local projects when we have enough labour from our local areas.
'We want the municipality to care for our job seekers, and we demand uMhlathuze stops allowing companies to bring in labour from elsewhere.'
It was confirmed that representatives from NCWF would meet with the city to hold discussions on a way forward and how the issues of unemployment and job creation could be addressed.