Johannesburg – Johannesburg Mayor Parks Tau has announced the launch of the Vulindlela eJozi programme, an innovative response to youth unemployment in the City.
Delivering the State of the City Address earlier today in Johannesburg, Mayor Tau said the Mayoral Committee has approved a partnership with Harambee Youth Accelerator, a leading youth development social enterprise forged by the private sector to drive the first year of the youth programme.
The Mayor explained that the programme will enable the youth to enter work, education and training opportunities.
“This programme will begin with screening, assessment and advisory services for all the candidates,” he said.
According to the Mayor, Vulindlela eJozi programme aims to break down barriers to opportunities for 200 000 youth by 2016.
Also, as part of the programme, it will identify and create opportunities for young people based on their aptitudes and capabilities.
These will include formal employment in companies of all sizes, public works programmes, national youth service programmes and micro-enterprise development channels, such as Jozi@work.
“We are using Jozi@work to demonstrate how we can innovate in order to transform the challenges of unemployment and service backlogs into an opportunity to create new enterprises and solve local problems,” the Mayor said.
Sizwe Magagula, 28, an unemployed graduate, told SAnews that he was impressed with what the mayor said.
“As a young person, I have hope that things will look better and I’ll get opportunities,” he said.
Many other young people were impressed by the Mayor’s address, saying there is a future for them in the City.
Equally, Council members have also expressed their satisfaction on the mayor’s budget vote.
Upgrading highways
Commenting on the recent Metro bus and Metro rail incidents, the Mayor said this has highlighted the importance of road safety.
He said work will be done to upgrade some of the highways to ensure they meet the Gauteng freeway standards, without tolls.
“We are urging all road users to be patient during this time and to also seek alternative transport,” he said.
Back-to-Basics
The Mayor also reiterated the City’s stance on service delivery, saying they fully support the Back-to-Basics approach that was recently agreed upon at a Salga conference held in Midrand.
“We have listened carefully to residents about their service expectations and captured these as council-approved standards,” he said.
Safety in the City
The mayor said the City is looking at implementing state-of-the-art cameras.
“We are innovating to transform how we run the City for the 21st century. For the people walking on the streets of the inner-city today, feeling unsafe, our new intelligent operations centre links together our upgraded CCTV cameras and gives us eyes on the street,” he said.
According to the Mayor, the new cameras can detect patterns of behaviour that arouse suspicion.
He said this will enable the City officials to see and prevent crime more quickly and link criminals and their vehicles to specific crime sites. – SAnews.gov.za
