Pretoria - Government is doing all it can to ensure that jobs are created despite tough economic circumstances, says President Jacob Zuma.
“We have been talking about this matter; it’s a matter that partly is influenced by the economic situation globally. You know that our projections about the growth in the country were different before the global economic meltdown.
“This made people lose their jobs. We’ve lost jobs and that made our economy not perform at the level that we thought it would perform,” said Zuma.
The President was speaking at an SABC interview following the launch of the public broadcaster’s 24-hour news channel in Auckland Park on Thursday.
While jobs were lost as a result of the meltdown, the economy had been creating some jobs, said the President.
“We’ve been battling with this and I think we’ve been doing everything we can to ensure that jobs are created. Whilst we lost jobs, we also created some jobs but not at the [level] that we wanted to,” said the President.
He said although the massive infrastructure plan formed part of government’s programme to create employment, the private sector also needed to come to the party.
“We have the massive infrastructure plan that is part of government creating jobs, creating the environment so that the private sector can come in and invest. We’ve done a lot on that. We’ve been working very hard,” said Zuma. – SAnews.gov.za
