More than 100 young people in the City of Joburg (CoJ) heeded the call to engage with Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) Loyiso Masuku in her webinar on Youth Engagement on Tuesday, 29 June 2021.
She unpacked job opportunities, skills and training and many other opportunities the City has for the youth of Johannesburg.
More than 50 messages were posted on the meeting’s online chat as everyone jumped at the opportunity to ask the MMC and City officials relevant and interesting questions.
“Youth development is central to the mission of the City. To fulfil this mission, the City provides internships, learnerships, vocational training, bursaries, and business opportunities for the young people,” said MMC Masuku.
She also encouraged the youth and women who have keen interest in developing their skills to register cooperatives online. This will enable the youth to gain access to market opportunities provided by the City. The City has another programme called “Business made easy”, which assists and trains residents to register on the service providers’ central database of the City.
“The City has a chartered accounts programme where young people who have been on the training programme were ultimately absorbed by the municipality. There is also a youth directorate platform that was signed off to ensure that the mainstreaming on youth development is achieved in the City,” said MMC Masuku.
The president of the Central Johannesburg College’s Student Representative Council, Palesa Mashego, spoke about the challenges of unemployment, which was exacerbated by Covid-19. “Youth are an integral part of the society, let our leaders put them in positions of influence, to shape the younger ones to dream big to see greater possibilities. We appeal to the government to support and provide resources to capacitate upcoming entrepreneurs.”
Tersia Groenewald, an Assistant Director on skills development said the City has an external focus in terms of youth development and building resilient communities. She made a detailed presentation on learnership, undergraduate and graduate internship programme, bursaries, skill development and recruit processes to alleviate youth unemployment rate.
On talent acquisition, Doris Bila, an Assistant Director, said they have a mandate to focus on Johannesburg youth employment. She said the new online job application system that is assisting in fast-tracking the attraction of youth within the communities and has drastically reduced the turnaround time in recruitment which has a positive effect on service delivery. This unit confirmed the system to be user friendly and easy to apply looking at the raised number of applications being received.
On employment equity (EE), the City has a disability strategy that benefit people with disabilities (PWD). The City has not reached a 2% quota minimum required by the Department of Labour in employing people with disabilities. The City is encouraging young people living with disabilities to enroll on the database in order to be considered for job opportunities in the municipality.
“The City of Joburg is fully cognisant of the challenges faced by the people living with disabilities as well as the LGBTQIA+ community. We have taken a conscious and deliberate action to make sure that everyone feels at home when they are in our City,” MMC Masuku concluded.