Majority of young people are not experiencing the economic growth South Africa has achieved, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said.

Addressing the 25th Annual General Meeting of the Western Cape Investment and Trade Promotion Agency (Wesgro) on Monday evening, she said economic growth should begin to reach the youth.

Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka called on the private sector to partner with government to ensure the young population was reached.

“We find that there are people who reach the age of 35, but have never worked. It is not good to have an economy that is indifferent to able-bodied young people,” she said.

South Africa, she said, could not have a situation where so many young people did not have a guaranteed place in the labour market. “We need to facilitate their entry into the labour market.”

The National Youth Service had taken on 30 000 young people this year to help facilitate this entry.

“For the first time their entry into the market will be subsidised in an attempt to take them out of poverty and desperation. But, 30 000 is a very small figure.”

Part of the aim of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) was to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014.

To this end business, labour and civil society had to partner with government to work together to address issues such as skills shortages that impact negatively on the country’s progress.

“In the first year AsgiSA is nowhere near where we are trying to get it but we know where the problem is. We have identified interventions. We are not working in the dark,” said the Deputy President.

Lack of absorption into the mainstream economy of those working in the informal "second economy" was a key challenge.

However, “we realise we have to engage with the second economy directly – that this cannot be delegated to the first economy to do. Public works needed to be expanded to reach the second economy and outreach programmes have to be increased,” the deputy president said.

While social security helped relieve poverty, it was not sustainable and there was the real issue that it did not help people exit a life of poverty, in fact, it would pass on poverty to the next generation.

“We need to see shorter turnaround times from government and the need of the private sector to invest in training. There has to be a paradigm shift on their part. The private sector cannot only do training because it’s a nice thing to do, they have to realise it is a matter of own survival,” she said.

BuaNews