JOBS SUMMIT AGREEMENTS

A number of agreements reached at the Jobs Summit are being taken further in Nedlac structures, as has been outlined in Nedlac's work programme for 1999. Others are being implemented by the Nedlac constituencies. The supervisory structure meets regularly to get a report-back on the progress which is being made.

From government's side, Cabinet has mandated the existing Investment Cluster to deal with the jobs summit implementation, whilst the Department of Labour is responsible for co-ordinating government's programmes. The lead Ministries are the Ministries of Labour, Public Works, Trade and Industry and Housing.

On the business side, the Business Trust has appointed an executive committee under the chairmanship of Saki Macozoma and Dave Brink, and it has appointed the National Business Initiative as the managing agent for the trust. The Executive Committee has members from both business and government. As was outlined in the jobs summit agreement, the trust's focus is on tourism, with an emphasis on marketing, SMMEs and learnerships and on education and training, with emphasis on school quality management, reducing repeater rates and capacity development in the further education and training sector.

Ntsika, which is government's small business promotion agency, has taken up the small business promotion issues and four task teams have been formed to take forward the mentorship, access to finance, support services and business incubation projects.

A meeting is being arranged with the Community Constituency in order to identify a mechanism to monitor the implementation of agreements which have elements targeted specifically at women, youth and people with disabilities.

On the labour side, the Labour Trust was launched by the Deputy President on 18 February. Job creation day on 3 March was heralded as a fine example of the three federations Cosatu, Nactu and Fedusa working together. Contributions have been made to the fund by parliamentarians, religious groups, civil servants, business people, as well as workers. The Nedlac secretariat contributed, raising an amount of R3 403-64. Readers are reminded that they can still make their contributions to the trust. They can also halve the contributions and pay them over two months.