Government should rather let private sector create jobs, say experts

As unemployment continues to soar, with about 33% of people in South Africa out of work according to the latest Stats SA report, President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday proudly claimed his Presidential Employment Stimulus (PES) had reached a million participants.

In his weekly newsletter, he said 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 scale needed.

“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.”

Ramaphosa said more than 140 000 subsistence farmers have received production input vouchers to resume and expand production after Covid disruptions.

However, chief economist at Efficient Group Dawie Roodt said this was another project Ramaphosa was involved in to try and create jobs, which was also another sign of how deep in trouble SA was.

He said the problem was politicians were confused and thought if they kept people busy, then they have created jobs.

“That is not the case. Keeping people busy is not the same as creating jobs.” Roodt said the kind of jobs which were “so-called” created were ones the private sector was not interested in and were a result of economic growth.

“The best way is to try and get people in the job market which will create opportunities and help people to be more employable,” he said.

“The real answer is not for these job creation projects. It is a waste of time and money. The real answer is to remove the obstacles to economic growth and employment which is important.”

Prof Daniel Meyer of University of Johannesburg’s College of Business and Economics said for the past 25 years, government had promised to create jobs and everyone believed them.

But it was unable to do so. Meyer said any government job creation project could not be supported because it should be the private sector which created jobs.

The government should rather put more money in the education system to skill develop primary, secondary, tertiary and technical and vocational education and training institutions and should not try to create their own skills and jobs.

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa: One million people employed through stimulus programme

– lungas@citizen.co.za