JOB SUMMIT SUPERVISORY STRUCTURE NOTES PROGRESS ON IMPLEMENTATION OF AGREEMENTS

The Supervisory Structure of the Presidential Job Summit met in Cape Town today and received report backs on the implementation of theagreements reached at the summit held in October last year. The parties noted that work isproceeding with all the issues that had been agreed upon. To mention some of the issues:

• Work has been proceeding on the Presidential Lead Project on Housing, and the creation of an institutional framework for the project is underway
• Ntsika 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.
• The Business Trust has been set up and has been meeting
• The Labour trust is currently being set up
• The Minister of Finance will give an indication in the February 17 Budget of the financial allocations to special employment programmes.

The meeting also discussed the further steps that needed to be taken in order to implement the job summit projects and programmes. It was agreed that reporting procedures needed to be tightened up and more co-ordination was necessary to ensure that the momentum that characterised the preparatory phase for the summit was not lost.

Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, whochairs the supervisory structure, reported that the existing Cabinet Investment Cluster would be the government structure responsible for overseeing the implementation of the agreements. The lead Ministries are the Ministries of Labour, Public Works, Trade and Industry and Housing.

The next meeting of the supervisory structure will be on the 5th March, to co-incide with the meeting of the Nedlac Executive Council on that date.

Acting Executive Director of Nedlac, Wendy Dobson, said that the meeting had been a positive one, and that all the Nedlac parties were committed to making sure the implementation process received the highest priority.

Ends