JOB CREATION SHOULD BE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE: ILO DG TELLS NEDLAC

Director General of the ILO, Juan Somavia, visited Nedlac on 23 August 2002, and gave a strong message regarding the importance of putting job creation strategies at the heart of all Government policy making. "Employment cannot be the result of economic policies, it should be the objective", he told a meeting of Nedlac's Management Committee. He said that he was becoming increasingly convinced that the present model of globalisation was incapable of producing jobs for people where they live.

Paying Nedlac an enormous compliment, he said that if any country in the world was capable of solving this problem, it was South Africa, and if South Africa managed to do it, it would be because of Nedlac.

Mr Somavia's second challenge to South Africa was to pay more attention to the local sector of the economy. "South Africa will not create the jobs the country needs by just hooking into the global economy, you need to concentrate on the local", he said.