Citizens 4 Change leader Dudu Ngcobo-Letseli said the future of the country was bleak, more especially for graduates as they were facing the possibility of being unemployed as the government did not have a tangible plan to address the high rate of unemployment.
“The situation is dire, there’s no hope, we have graduates this year, who have just finished their degrees and some post-graduates, and we know that in terms of absorbing all these graduates will be near impossible.
“We have a programme that we think is going to be doing great for job creation. This programme seeks to close the gaps in unemployment. With this programme, we will be looking at empowering township economy,” Ngcobo-Letseli said.
She said once they are in power, they will implement policies that would force government facilities to start providing small businesses with jobs. Ngcobo gave an example of hospitals, saying the hospitals that needed to be supplied with toilet rolls should seek such services from local businesses.
“It takes two months to establish a toilet paper factory, we have a system that can assist such DTI and many others within government. Everything that is procured by the hospitals and clinics should be provided by local businesses to create employment.”
Ngcobo-Letseli said this during a round-table discussion with The Star on what her organisation would offer South Africans should they vote for them.
The Citizens 4 Change leader lambasted the country’s migration laws saying they were the weakest of all among other countries.
Ngcobo-Letseli alluded that when one visits other African countries, one is expected to have a visitation letter.
She said the country needed to enforce the immigration laws, adding that it also needed to check what attracted many of these illegal foreigners to the country.
Ngcobo-Letseli further said the government needed to scrutinise businesses that were not in line with paying the minimum wage as that was the reason most of the companies like restaurants were full of illegal foreigners.
“Once you deal with the employer, we have closed the tap because we keep on putting people against each. We need to look at this thing honestly and say how we are going to deal with the employer employing people who do not have the right papers,” she added.
On education, the Citizens 4 Change leader said the government can’t keep on pumping money into public universities that keep on producing skills that the market cannot absorb.
Ngcobo-Letseli said universities should be judged on the impact they were making saying that way universities would be able to go to factories and ask them what skills they require for their graduates to be absorbed easily once they graduated.
The Star
Sipho Jack