Zama Thusi

The Department of Basic education is hiring young people who will be placed in nearly 26 000 schools across South Africa.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said those 300,000 opportunities will be made available for young people to be engaged as assistants at schools as part of the government job-led recovery plan.

Ramaphosa explained the implementation process of this plan.

“More than 40 000 teaching posts are being secured in schools which have lost income from fees. The implementation of the employment stimulus has already commenced. Each of these work opportunities is fully funded and ready for implementation. The speed and urgency which we are expanding employment programs demonstrates our commitment to those who are without work at this time”

This plan presented by Ramaphosa mainly affects the youth. Looking at the country’s unemployment rate among the youth in South Africa which was sitting at 30, 1% in the first quarter of the year.

Young people are the most unemployed group, and these school assistant jobs are set to last for three months from 01 December 2020 until the 31st of March 2021. Government is looking to uplift unemployed young people but not everyone is excited about this job opportunity.

Noluthando Makhathini, unemployed graduate, said: “I don’t think this initiative by government is fair at all, we have a lot of unemployed graduates like myself who need employment. A stipend of R3500 seems very unreasonable to me because this offer is open to everyone even people with matric certificates only, how can you pay a university graduate and a person who passed only matric the same amount of money. That is not fair, but there’s nothing we can do besides applying because we need to make some sort of living for ourselves”.

Londeka Cele, an unemployed matriculant thinks this is a great opportunity for many young people.

“I think this is a great opportunity for many young people especially because we are struggling to find jobs as it is. I believe this will help many households and people. R3 500 seems reasonable for me especially because I have no tertiary qualification just my matric certificate, I am very excited for this opportunity and I did apply for it,” she said.

Zama Lukhozi, a university student, said: This job offer by government does not make sense, this is a short-term plan for just three months what will happen to all these people they hired after three months? I believe government should be looking to make long term employment plans not this. After three months a lot of people will be left stranded and unemployed once again than we will go back to having the high unemployment rate that we have now. Coronavirus affected a lot of jobs so we need a long-term employment plan, government must stop playing with people.

Photo: livingcities.org