Ramaphosa’s plan to help people get a job in South Africa: The government’s Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES)
Ramaphosa’s plan to help people get a job in South Africa: The government’s Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES).
SOURCE | BusinessTech
______
The government’s Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES), which aimed to create jobs through public funding, has reached a million participants.
Writing in his weekly open letter to the public, Ramaphosa said that the PES was an initiative to support livelihoods after the pandemic by creating employment opportunities while the economy took time to recover and create jobs at the necessary scale.
“Although the pandemic may have abated, unemployment has not,” he said.
South Africans face a major barrier to finding a job, said Ramaphosa. The president noted that quality work experience and training are also required by businesses that wish to employ applicants.
“In a context where a lack of work experience is a major barrier to finding work, these programmes are providing high-quality work experiences.”
He said that there is concern around the business community that young applicants lack skills and experience. This comes on top of a staggeringly high unemployment rate that, according to the latest Stats SA data, sits at 33.9%.
This number is predicted to only increase, with financial services firm PwC expecting it to reach 40% of the total population by 2030. According to the firm, close to 350,000 adults are to be added to the labour pool every year, but the economy is only able to grow at a rate supporting around 200,000 jobs per year.
This, in turn, will drive unemployment higher, added the group.
Regarding work experience needed alongside some sort of qualification, the PES is said to also support graduates by partnering with universities to place unemployed graduates in work relevant to their field of study, specifically in the following fields, among others:
- Nursing
- Science
- Artisanal industry
“In the largest programme supported by the stimulus, for example, nearly 600,000 young people have been placed as school assistants in over 22,000 schools in every corner of the country,” said Ramaphosa.
School management, teachers and other stakeholders all agree that the contribution of the school assistants has improved the learning environment in schools, he added.
The president said that instead of a ‘trickle down’, money from the initiative is being focused at a grassroots level that ‘trickles up’ into the wider economy. “That is why we call it a stimulus, because the entire economy benefits along with society,” said Ramaphosa.
As a result of the Presidential Employment Stimulus, we now have hundreds of thousands of people with valuable work experience. We call on businesses to hire these young people with newly-acquired work experience as they leave these programmes.
“As we pursue economic growth to deliver decent and sustainable employment at a much larger scale, we will continue to build on the success of the Presidential Employment Stimulus and expand its reach. It is still very much needed to complement the recovery of the job market.”
The end.
SOURCE | BusinessTech
