Johannesburg - Gauteng Premier Panyaza has promised to fight unemployment after thousands of young people turned up in their numbers to apply for thousands of jobs in the provincial government.
Lesufi said this is an ongoing process as other plans were in the pipeline to get more young people into the labour market.
Lesufi was at Nasrec on Friday as thousands of young people waited patiently in long queues to hand in their applications to the officials.
He said they were tired of celebrating Youth Day with so many unemployed young people.
Transport MEC Kedibone Diale-Tlabela was deployed in Tembisa to monitor the situation.
Diale-Tlabela said she was left emotional after seeing thousands of young people standing in long queues.
She said they were making progress as more than 2 000 applications had been received by midday.
She said it was an emotional experience seeing a long line of unemployed people ready to hand in their CVs for job opportunities.
“If you know what unemployment does, I was once unemployed, I have some family and community members who are unemployed. I shed a tear earlier finding young people who told me that they were here as early as 4am. You can see they are looking for jobs,” she said.
She added that they will try by all means to hire as many people as possible. The Department of Labour was on site.
Lesufi said they were working hard to ensure that they get the youth into jobs.
“We are sending a message to all unemployed young people that we are ready to employ you in Gauteng. We don’t want to celebrate June 16 being unemployed. We are tired of unemployment,” he said.
The jobs include general workers, receptionists, drivers, artisans, cleaners, security managers and social workers, among others.
“Our teams are hard at work to push the queues! No speeches today, but opportunities. A better Gauteng is rising.
“We said we will pump this economy of our province to create massive opportunities for our people and not handouts. Thank you so much for the amazing support,” said Lesufi.
He added that they will advertise 6 000 new posts in July for Gauteng to fight poverty.
“We are also advertising 6 000 new posts … we will fix our townships,” he said.
Thousands of the youth had showed up across Gauteng.
Many of them were seen filling out the Z83 government application forms on car bonnets.
Many told IOL that they were in the queue as early as 4am, despite cold weather conditions. The hopes were high that they will be employed.
Livhuwni Maiteledzha and Tshavheni Rambauli who were at the Rabasotho community centre in Tembisa to submit their CVs, told IOL that they were happy with the initiative as it will bring them jobs and more opportunities.
“I am very happy because this opportunity will help a lot of people, as you can see old people are also here to apply. So big up to Panyaza, and thank you,” said Maiteledzha.
Current Affairs