President Cyril Ramaphosa has said that South Africa should make every effort to target the youth when it comes to employment, adding that the current applications for relief funds show most people are unemployed.
Ramaphosa, who was speaking at a three-day virtual African National Congress (ANC) meeting on Saturday, said looking at the relief applications, some 62% of those who applied for the US$25 monthly social relief grant were youth between 18 years and 35 years old.
“This is a testimony that unemployment is rife among young people,” he said, adding that South Africa’s youth unemployment had reached a crisis level in the country.
He asked the ANC delegates deployed as heads of government agencies to check how long could National Treasury sustain nearly US$2 billion set aside for the Social Relief of Distress Grant — and how feasible the money would be to reach March 2022.
He urged them to develop programmes to help the unemployed and young people, in particular, to enter the job market and become more self-sufficient.
The meeting was attended by ANC members deployed in government — including ministers and their deputies, directors-general and mayors, among others.
NM/jn/APA