[South Africa] State plans to halve poverty by 2014

from The Independent Online

By Wendy Jasson da Costa

The government on Monday gave some meat to its plan to slash South Africa's high unemployment and poverty rates by half in the next eight years.

The vehicle for this is the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for SA (Asgi-SA).

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said on Monday that tourism and business process outsourcing (BPO) would be tackled first. The BPO sector had the potential for 100 000 jobs by 2009.

Mlambo-Ngcuka said the tourism sector was ready for a second phase of growth, which could take its contribution to the GDP from about 8 percent to 12 percent and increase employment by up to 400 000 people by 2014.

The expanded public works programme would be extended and entail about R4,5-billion in additional funds, leading to about 63 000 more people maintaining roads and about 100 000 in jobs averaging six months.

Unemployed graduates would be targeted for jobs or learnerships and 100 new Youth Advisory Centres would be be set up, to enroll at least 10 000 young people in the National Youth Service.

The government also planned to enroll 5 000 volunteers as mentors to vulnerable children.

Problems identified in the local government programme, Project Consolidate, would be addressed by deploying about 150 experts to these areas to serve as a means of skills transfer for new graduates.

A database of "retired experts" was being compiled for this programme.

Trade and industry minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said his department and environmental affairs and tourism would work to accelerate growth in tourism.

There were plans to "create an environment for street vendors to trade", with "appropriate local government support" for 500 000 informal vendors.