Thank you, hon Deputy Speaker. Hon Steenhuisen, I agree with you and I am glad
to know that you do read the text of what I say here in the National Assembly. That pleases me to no end. Of course youth unemployment is our biggest challenge, and we know that. In a way we have become a victim of the success that we have made in bringing more and more young people...[Interjections.] No, that's true. More and more young people are getting into education facilities. They qualify and get out. When you meet them in the streets they say you have given us education and we now have certificates, but we don't work. That is precisely the challenge that is there for all of us and I bear the challenge, the problem and the burden of that everyday. This is precisely what we need to respond to.
As I said earlier we are embarking on enormous initiatives which are being led in the President's Office. We are collaborating with a number of partners in the private sector in a most enthusiastic way. The National Youth Development Agency, Youth Employment Service, Yes, programme, Harambe and many others are all involved. All these are now working on a major intervention that is going to bring in a number of young people. We are going to count in hundreds of thousands to
try and reduce the level of unemployment amongst young people.
Clearly, you say we should abandon labour and the communists. Let me tell you something. Labour has been, and continues to be, a real good partner of the governing party. The stability that we have today in our county today is in large measure and is also a borne out of the partnership and the alliance that we have as a governing party with the communist; yes, with labour; and yes, with other socio-organisations like the community-based organisations. Obviously, in our disclamations we do deal with these issues - we discuss these issues.
When we were negotiating the national minimum wage some of these issues came out for discussions and we agreed that we should have a national minimum wage which is going to cut across and be applicable to all working people in our country. Soon the assessment of the national minimum wage impact will be out and we will be able to measure precisely the impact that it has.
The measures and interventions that we are embarking on are not the type of interventions, in my view, that are going to make things a lot worse. In fact, they are aimed at ensuring that we do reduce the level of unemployment amongst young people. We are focusing our attention precisely on the employment amongst young people because it is the biggest challenge that we face. Every year we have more and more young people coming into the labour market and for that reason we want to ensure that our economy grows, we create more firms and companies that will help to create jobs. That is the task that we have embarked upon.
If you have better ideas on how this can be done put them on the table rather than lamenting. We say let's all act and let's work together to address this challenge. Thank you very much.