Alex-based SA Job Seekers Movement president Mush Raletjena believes their jobs push has yielded desired results
Operation jobs in Sandton has been a resounding success, says Mush Raletjena of the SA Job Seekers Movement in Alexandra.
The Alex-based South African Job Seekers Movement has allayed fears that it was an organisation of ‘hooligans seeking to intimidate employers and disrupt industrial peace’ with its frequent site visits.
Movement president Mush Raletjena said his organisation was nowhere near the status of hooligans. “We are a peace-loving movement that is seeking to engage employers and industry to ensure that the people of Alexandra, whose township is an enclave of poverty in the midst of wealth and powerful industries, get a fair chance of being considered first for employment.
“We are not hooligans, as we never intimidate, harass, threaten or force anyone to listen and hear our story during our campaigns. We don’t toyi-toyi nor burn tyres and barricade roads during our campaigns but we conduct ourselves in a peaceful manner.
“We are a progressive organisation that only seeks peaceful engagements with potential employers as we request to drop our CVs [curriculum vitae] for possible consideration for employment since we started the operation ‘Imisebenzi Yethu’ [our jobs] in January this year.
“We want to build relationships and trust with potential employers so we can easily engage to address the unemployment situation that is getting out of hand and leading to criminal activity as well,” Raletjena told Alex News at the Motsweding offices of the Greater Alexandra Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Wynberg.
Raletjena said so far they had done 13 door-to-door visits to drop CVs and they conducted two marches one to the JSE [Johannesburg Stock Exchange] in Sandton and the other to the Home Affairs Department which included the City of Johannesburg’s Region E offices, also in Sandton.
Although they are unable to quantify the success of the operation as those who drop CVs and eventually gain employment do not report back, Raletjena said he can safely say it has been successful in that when they started the operation the number of job seekers was too high and they have since dwindled to a handful of people.
“That alone tells us the operation has been a huge success,” he said, adding that the reason why they go knocking from firm to firm it’s because of the security red tape and gatekeepers that have strict instructions not to allow anyone to enter the premise.
“But when we come as a group and seek an audience with their human resource people, we are eventually granted that right even though sometimes it’s after tense and strenuous negotiations but it does happen eventually,” said Raletjena he was talking in the company of Dumisani Nkosi, founder and chairperson of Unemployed Seeking Employment.
