Labour minister offers internships

Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant says her department will give internships to hundreds of young people a year to give them experience and make them employable.

Research by Stats SA shows the number of unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 35 has slightly dropped from 3.2-million to just over 3.1-million - more than 70% of people who are jobless.

A diagnostic report released by the National Planning Commission in June revealed that once a young person turns 24 without having been employed, they were unlikely ever to get a job.

Oliphant said the aim was to provide hundreds of internships.

She said her department had programmes focused on creating new jobs and saving existing jobs. These included the lay-off training scheme, which aimed to retrain retrenched workers so that they could return to work for the same companies. The scheme also offered companies in distress financial assistance to save jobs.

The department also provided assistance regarding skills training, career counselling and placement.

According to a department report to parliament's portfolio committee on labour, 483 038 job seekers registered with the department in the past year. About 65000 unemployed people were provided with career counselling, 25000 were referred for placement and 12801 were successfully placed.

The DA's spokesman on labour, Ian Ollis, said that although the department had enough initiatives in place to tackle unemployment and retrenchment, he was concerned that it only spent R40.2-million - 1.6% of the lay-off training scheme's R2.4-billion budget.

Oliphant said one of the reasons was that companies were often not willing to disclose financial statements to prove distress - a requirement for financial assistance.

Ollis said he had asked the department to assist 1200 Aurora mine workers who lost their jobs when the Pamodzi mine was liquidated about three years ago.

"There is a technical problem with the application. Workers need to have a current contract of employment in order to qualify under the scheme," Ollis said.

"With the Aurora bosses having abandoned the mine and it being placed in provisional liquidation, it is not technically a "lay-off" and these 1 200 workers do not qualify, under a strict interpretation of the rules," Ollis said yesterday.