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Businesses urged to give job seekers a chance

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Executive Director of Ubuntu imitative Stefan Lauber has criticised business leaders for being calm and collected at a time when unemployment numbers continue to raise.

The founder of the job summit – a project of the Ubuntu initiative has urged businesses to open their doors and give young people work experience and skills.

Various Chief Executive Officers of private sector companies met earlier on Monday at the launch of the job summit to see how they can create 100 000 new jobs by the end of next year.

Businesses say government must also stick to its National Development Plan targets if they want to create the much needed jobs.

Lauber says the private sector needs to do much more to create jobs. He has urged businesses to make more commitment in giving job seekers experience and skills.  He says this is one of the biggest challenges facing job creation in the country to date

“If someone has to 12 months work experience they have an eighty per cent chance of finding a work career, the problem is that when people come out of school and look for jobs the employers always says they don’t have work experience and the young person always asks how can I get work experience if you don’t give me chance. Linked to that is that we don’t give young people training so that when they arrive in a company they can perform because there are jobs around, because employers are complaining we do not have the right people; we can’t find the right people.”

Lauber says companies must stop crying and blaming government for the current unemployment crisis. He has criticised business leaders for being calm and collected at a time when unemployment numbers continue to raise.

“We now have 9.3 million unemployed people and two thirds of that are young people. Right now matric is over, people have written their exams, seven to eight hundred thousand people have written their exams and how many of them are going to go into universities or further studies maybe two to three hundred thousand okay.  January, February comes the other half of people are going nowhere and it’s really the same every year. Last year about the same time we were talking five million unemployed people.  This year we are talking six million and next year probably we will be talking seven million.”

President at Information Technology Association of South Africa Sunil Geness has urged businesses to not just act but make prominent commitments to job creation.

“Next year it is 2018 , it is here on your door step, you have your consistent salaries, your bonuses to look forward to, your still in a job or your still making money in this country but there are a number of people in society who have never walked into an office and as industries this job creation and this job summit should be the paramount factor in which we look at, if we are not doing that then it’s a talk shop.”

The National Development Plan stipulates that South Africa must create 11 million jobs by 2030 and maintain an average GDP of 5.4% per year until 2030.

The job summit has been established to bring together people with a common vision and purpose who are responsible to improve the job situation in the country especially the private sector.

A report released by Business Leadership South Africa shows that businesses remain the most significant direct contributor to the South African economy and employs 6. 9 times the number of public sector employees.

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