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The DA raises its reservations on the NW Youth Entrepreneurship Service Fund Act, Repeal Bill. 

The bill seeks to disestablish a provincial entity that was created to support youth entrepreneurship initiatives across the province.

However, the DA highlights the following:

The action of repealing the bill will generate an automatic UIF&W from the Auditor General against the Office of the Premier, and this is a new administration, and this should not be part of the 7th Administration liabilities!

While the Office of the Premier lists a number of reasons for supporting the dis-establishment, it does not make sense that since 2016, when the Fund came into operation, it took the provincial government eight full years to realise that it was not in line with its mandate.

Amongst the plethora of reasons provided by the Office of the Premier for the repeal is that since its formation, the entity has never operated. What is of concern is the lack of accountability on who is responsible for this failure to have the entity operating on its mandate since 2016.

Youth unemployment is at a staggering 54.2% in North West. If the provincial government was serious about youth development, this entity would have performed its mandate and assisted in alleviating unemployment. The youth in NW still have limited opportunities to participate in the mainstream economy.

The Office of the Premier explains that it has created a directorate in its organisational structure that will deal with youth policy coordination and has integrated the mandate of the entity into it. What is not being said is that the focus of this new directorate will be to coordinate and not to implement, as was the initial intention of the entity, where mobilising resources and investment in youth development programs and projects was one of the key areas the entity was to focus on.

While noting that the entity never got to operate, it is a sad reminder of the lack of political will to address youth unemployment head-on in the province. To simply say its functions are incorporated into other departments is the normal rhetoric that the ANC-led provincial government always preaches with no specifics.

However, we will reject the Repeal Bill until we are convinced that there are alternative measures to address youth entrepreneurship and to cover the mandate that YES was supposed to fulfil.

The DA will only support a refocus of the bill if it includes Learnerships that pay up to 15% more in yearly wages than the current generation of IT-based learnerships.

Learnerships must also cover Apprenticeships of trades such as Millwright, Fitter, Boiler, Heavy Motor Vehicle Driver, Construction, etc.

Employment growth in North West will require 10 to 15% of the new workforce to be trained per year. 

Issued by Wolfgang Wallhorn - DA Speaker on the Office of the Premier in the North West provincial Legislature