The private corporate sector is not the only partner. Take the question of the Youth Wage Subsidy. This government is committed to a multipronged strategy to address unemployment, especially youth unemployment, including skills training, learnerships, assistance to small, medium and micro enterprises, SMMEs, co-operatives, the Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, including the Community Works Programme, CWP, and, yes, also various forms of subsidies. But how do you subsidise the unemployed youth? By subsidising the employers - that is the DA's answer. That is how you subsidise the youth. [Interjections.]
And yes, that might be a way of doing it, but it takes a peculiarly class- biased set of blinkers not to recognise that there are many potential pitfalls and abuses down that route, and there are plenty of international examples, including currently in Spain, to demonstrate how abuses might proliferate when you subsidise the bosses to employ the youth at lower wages. We need to address the issue seriously. As we address the unemployment crisis, we need to work closely with all sectors of our society, including organised labour and the unemployed in our communities. Any attempt to play off the one against the other, organised labour against the unemployed, for narrow electoral purposes, is an exceedingly dangerous and irresponsible line of march.
One member talked about Nazism, throwing that term around loosely. I am not going to accuse anyone here of Nazism, because it would be wrong. [Interjections.] However, let us remember that precisely marches of the unemployed directed against the organised working class in Germany were the foundation of the development of the Nazi movement there. So, I am not accusing you of doing that, but do not play free and easy with something that is extremely dangerous. [Interjections.] [Applause.]
Certainly, one of the most innovative and dynamic approaches to working together, Mr President, is the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, PICC, which you launched in October last year. Since the onset of the global economic crisis in 2008, we have understood that a major, state-led, multiyear infrastructure programme is our key, but not our only counter-cyclical strategy to sustain and dynamise, as best possible, our productive economic activity and job creation.
The PICC, as you have mentioned, Mr President, has identified 17 strategic integrated projects. These are catalytic infrastructure build projects that would unlock untapped resources that will contribute to job creation, both in the construction and in the postconstruction phase; help to develop neglected rural regions of our country; link actively with our industrial policy action programmes; address the economic dysfunctionality and social injustices associated with the apartheid spatial form of our urban spaces; prioritise energy-efficient infrastructure; for instance, rail over road; help to drive effective links with our region and our continent; and, in short, will help to place our country onto a new growth path.
The PICC is an excellent example of working together, firstly, as government. The PICC, as chaired by the President and deputised by the Deputy President, is constituted by a range of relevant national line department Ministers, together with all nine, not eight, but all nine premiers, with strong support from all nine premiers - let me underline that. Metro mayors are active members of the PICC, including the metro mayor of Cape Town and the SA Local Government Association, Salga. We are working together across clusters and line departments, as municipalities and provinces, and across different political parties, as one country and one government, under your leadership, Mr President.
The PICC met again in a plenary session yesterday. The leadership there was recognised by the Premier of the Western Cape very actively and supported in the course of this infrastructure issue; it was recognised by the Mayor of Cape Town, very actively and strongly, and supportive of the programmes of the PICC. Correctly so. [Interjections].
The PICC met again in a plenary session yesterday, Mr President. There was one key item on the agenda. It was to evaluate the actual construction activity that is under way. Too often, the impression is created that nothing is happening; that everything is just a talk-shop, a succession of one plan on paper after another.
South Africa is, however, starting to become, once more, the vast construction site of which you have spoken, Mr President - unevenly, of course, and with many challenges, yes. In the progress report presented to yesterday's PICC plenary, we were reminded, just to take one example, of the Medupi Power Station, which is now 39,2% complete, not 39,1%, or 39,3%. We are monitoring this extremely closely as the PICC, and it employs currently 15 787, not 15 786 workers on site. [Applause.]
This is the largest construction site in the southern hemisphere, as we speak. Yes, there have been delays, and yes, this project started before the establishment of the PICC. The role of the PICC is to identify the reasons for the delays and to unblock problems. It is also, above all, to ensure that this massive project, in this case an electricity generation project, is part of an integrated infrastructure, an economic and social developmental programme involving water, rail and mining infrastructure. Critically, it also has to ensure that the new city that is literally emerging in the veld at Lephalale, in the old Ellisras, is not just another apartheid-era mining town, but a green city, an integrated city, an economically functional and socially just city.
On Sunday, the hon Mazibuko piously called for us in Parliament to rise ... [Interjections.] Yes, I do read, I am not blind, I am very genuine. On Sunday, the hon Mazibuko piously called on us all in Parliament to rise above our rivalries, to remain united and focused, despite our differences, on the big issues of our country and of our world. Too often in the course of this debate, the hon Mazibuko and her colleagues continued to bark and shout; they have been doing exactly the opposite, sinking this debate into petty rivalries and into tweetable quotes.
In supporting this Vote, Mr President, the ANC knows that you will not allow yourself or the rest of us to be distracted from the important tasks that are actively under construction in our country, as we speak. Thank you. [Applause.]