Hon Chair, Minister, all members present here, good afternoon ...
IsiXhosa:
... molo sisi!
English:
South Africa is in a state of emergency that is caused by inter alia by the lack of jobs. Secondly, where there are jobs, there is no living wage. Thirdly, there is an absence of the creation of a proper milieu for job creation. Fourthly, where either jobs or a proper job creation milieu exists, it is mostly people from beyond our seas or borders who are usually employed that because many owners of work can easily exploit such poor workers since the latter shall accept anything they are given whilst they are denied permanent jobs nor given any chance to access protection from trade union representation. All this has led - without a doubt - to an absence of access to basic services such as education, health etc which, although government alleges, the majority of South Africans enjoy. We know that the antithesis is the case. The strategic plan
and the APP 2019-2020 mainly clarifies what the department will achieve administratively but to a very limited scale that which is basic to millions of South Africans mainly job creation and workers protection. I here refer to the department's baseline which does not indicate how the extremely high unemployment rate will be addressed. Although government keeps on telling South Africans that only
nine million people are not employed and that the rate is going down daily, South Africans and those among us who chose to accept the truth know that unemployment is actually beyond 50% of the working age South Africans. What is the proof? As a quarterly labour force survey showed late last year, only 47% of the working-age persons worked whilst unemployment is growing, be it in areas of workers of the or workers of the hand. This makes one to conclude that the department's output indicator has travelled a limited ... [Time expired.] [Interjections.]