President Cyril Ramaphosa has hailed all social partners that have committed to work with government in ensuring that the increasing level of unemployment is curbed.
Ramaphosa was delivering a keynote address at the two-day Presidential Job Summit aimed decreasing the ever growing rate of unemployment. The summit is held in Midrand, north of Johannesburg.
Government and both labour, business signed an agreement framework committing themselves to work together to come up with measures to stimulate the economy, create and maintain jobs.
Many gathered to come with practical solution to address the challenges of unemployment.
Ramaphosa says despite ever growing challenges the country face, government with the assistance social partners can still salvage what’s left of the NDP goals.
He called the two-day meeting to deal with the country’s stubbornly high unemployment rate, which is just over 27%.
#JobsSummit The Jobs Summit will take place today and tomorrow, led by state President Cyril Ramaphosa. pic.twitter.com/Lv23yhYfSD
— Jobs Summit (@JobsSummit) October 4, 2018
The President urged South Africans to put their country first by buying local goods as this will also assist in maintaining and creating needed jobs.
“South African companies and the government itself and consumers must commit to buying local. If we do no buy the food that comes out of South African soil, there will be no farms and no farm workers. It will just be job-losses.
The framework agreement goes into detail on measures to promote local procurement both within the private and public sectors.
The President blamed corruption, policy uncertainty and inconsistency for the increasing rate of unemployment.
The measures announced include boosting local procurement, an export drive and financial sector investments in black-owned industrial enterprises.
President Ramaphosa has also admitted that government will miss the National Development Plan target of reducing the country’s unemployment rate to around 6% by 2030.
He concedes that the NDP target will be missed unless something extraordinary is done.
