Johannesburg - Young people can benefit from programmes worth billions of rand through skills development and doing business with parastatals, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba said on Tuesday.
“There should be more efforts from parastatals to lead in empowering and creating employment for young people,” Gigaba said at briefing hosted by The New Age newspaper in Pretoria.
Eskom would spend R24-billion a year doing business with youth-owned businesses by 2017, he said.
“Eskom's skills development programmes will prepare and help the youth to trade in the sectors it operates in.”
New energy technology would create a platform for young people to participate in the sector through fields such as research, engineering and maintenance.
Transnet intended spending at least R18bn this financial year on companies owned by young people, especially those in townships and rural areas, Gigaba said.
“Transnet will also spend R7.7bn on training, and R4.7bn of that amount will go into funding bursaries and grants. At least 2 000 apprentices will be in training at any given time.”
Gigaba said South African Airways would soon launch its own flight academy to train pilots from South Africa and across the continent.
“The academy will become the centre of excellence... making a footprint across the continent.”
The cost per pilot candidate would be between R1-million and R2-million for three years of training, he said. - Sapa
* If you use Gmail to read IOL's newsletters, note that Google is rolling out a new tabbed inbox that filters your mail into 5 separate tabs - Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates and Forums. IOL emails will probably be sent to the "Promotions" tab instead of the "Primary" tab. If you don't want it that way, drag the newsletter from the Promotions tab to the Primary tab. An alert will pop up. Click "yes" and your newsletters will continue to go to your Primary inbox.