Meth said these will be, among others, building our industries; tackling the prohibitive cost of living; and investing in people.

The Ministry intends, he added, to create and sustain 2.5 million job opportunities by delivering public goods and services in communities, as well as to implement a cross-cutting industrial strategy that will drive growth and create opportunities for the youth and other unemployed people.

Also, he continued, address the war on poverty by providing comprehensive social security and basic services through the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation Fund; and continue to enforce the national minimum wage in all applicable industries in South Africa.

Meth stressed that South Africa is still struggling with the persistent triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and inequality.

The scourge of unemployment, the Minister said, remains a major obstacle facing the country, with the official unemployment rate currently standing at 32.9 percent, according to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS) for the first quarter of 2024.

Those statistics, he emphasized, are a reminder that the stakes are still high and that ‘we must hasten to strengthen the implementation of interventions to reduce the unemployment rate.’

However, Meth added, substantial results can be achieved through an intensive and collaborative mechanism, ‘which will propel us all towards achieving the Ministry’s goals’.

ef/abo/mem/mv