Youth employment initiative to be launched this month

Out of a total youth population in South Africa of 17 million, 36% are employed, three million are not economically active and the actual number of youths without jobs is 5.9 million.

This is according to Youth Employment Service (Yes) CEO Tashmia Ismail-Saville, who said these figures are taken from the latest count by StatsSA.

Yes is an initiative which is meant to bring to fruition to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s promise to provide 1 million unemployed South African youth with jobs. It is expected that Yes will be launched sometime this month.

Speaking to the SABC, Ismail-Saville added that 56% of the million youth entering the labour force each year do not possess a matric certificate which means they do not have a way of achieving certain results they wish to achieve.

“So the Youth Employment Service is trying to work on the demand side of the economy and the demand side of the economy is, how do we find new places and new spaces for work that didn’t exist before?” Ismail-Saville said.

She said one of the solutions the service is looking at is finding jobs for unemployed youth closer to where they live.

She said jobs for unemployed young South Africans can be sourced in the digital space which has a diverse range of opportunities.

“Something like coding, you don’t need to be in a big office building in a metro to do coding, digital surveys, GPS location for marketing companies, so there is a whole range to explore,” she said.

Ismail-Saville said Yes has a BEE scorecard recognition called employment recognition which acknowledges businesses that employ young people during slow growth economic conditions.

“There’s the employment tax incentive which is a R1 000 back on black youth between 18 and 29 on every month’s salary,” she said.

Ismail-Saville said the programme run by Yes is more than an internship as it encourages companies to recruit as many young people as they can into their employ, and that the service also has Small Medium Micro-sized Enterprise (SMME) and Micro Enterprise Strategies. These strategies, she said, are when large companies which cannot afford to accommodate a young person in their office building pays for that unemployed youth to gain experience at an SMME based in their place of residence.

“Then we get a double ring because the young person gets this year-long experience and the SMME grows,” she said.

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