Ramaphosa to inspect Limpopo rural access road initiative

President Cyril Ramaphosa will inspect progress made by the national Department of Transport in completing a 40km rural access road project in the Greater Letaba local municipality tomorrow.

The construction of the road has created 115 jobs for youth and women from different villages in the local municipality. Ramaphosa’s visit comes at a time Limpopo is acutely ravaged by mass job losses.

Unemployment

According to the third term’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey, the province’s expanded unemployment rate rose to 54.5%, a year-on-year increase of 7.6%.

The province had further recorded the second-largest increase in the official unemployment rate in the third quarter – up 2.1 percentage points from 30.4% to 32.5%.

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These statistics effectively mean out of a workforce of 3 890 000, just over a million people are unemployed.
All sectors, with the exception of construction, experienced quarter-to-quarter losses in employment.

The sectors with the most jobs losses are:

Agriculture (lost 20 000 jobs);
– Mining (11 000 jobs);
– Manufacturing (12 000 jobs);
– Trade (31 000 jobs);
– Community and social services (37 000 jobs); and
– Private households (19 000 jobs).

Yesterday, the Presidency said the rural road construction which Ramaphosa is visiting was a flagship project of the department’s labour-intensive S’hamba Sonke programme.

The road covers the R36 provincial route via Marobeng to the D11 road at Tshabelane, Capricorn and Mopani district municipalities.

The programme, which has seen the department invest in the roll-out of road infrastructure, mainly in rural areas, plays a key role in supporting the Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan announced by Ramaphosa in the February 2018 State of the Nation Address.

“The government is implementing the plan to enable an economic rebound through job creation, critical economic reforms, acceleration of service delivery and expansion of the small, medium and micro enterprise (SMME) sector,” the presidency said in a statement.

“More than 50 SMMEs have participated in the project as part of a contractual requirement for their empowerment.”

The plan highlights largescale infrastructure development and an employment stimulus assome of the key actions towards rebuilding an economy that has been severely impacted by the Covid pandemic.

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