NEDLACCONSTITUENCIES MAKE PROGRESS ON IMPLEMENTING GDS
AGREEMENTS
1 April 2004
Government, business, labour and community, who make up Nedlac,
the National Economic Development and Labour Council, have all made
progress in implementing commitments made at the 2003 Growth and
Development Summit (GDS).
This was revealed at a media conference in Johannesburg today,
where Nedlac's Executive Director, Herbert Mkhize, launched
Nedlac's latest newsletter, the Dialogue.
The latest edition is dedicated to updating the public on
progress made on all four themes of the GDS agreement: jobs,
investment, social equity and local action.
Areas in which there have been progress include the Expanded
Public Works Programme, the promotion of co-operatives,
preparations for a Pension Fund Trustees conference, and expanding
the notion of social dialogue (harnessing the power of government
business, labour and community working together on economic issues)
to provincial and local levels.
The updates in this newsletter are precursors of a major annual
review of progress which will take place in the run-up to, and in
the next quarterly meeting of the highest decision-making structure
of Nedlac, the Executive Council. This will take place on 21 May,
just prior to the first anniversary of the Summit, which was held
on 7 June 2003.
Nedlac's Executive Director, Herbert Mkhize, said that GDS
implementation was the most important item on Nedlac's agenda for
2004. "The constituencies are all absolutely committed to making
sure that the commitments that they made in June 2003 come to
fruition", he said. The Nedlac secretariat has brought in extra
project management capacity in order to help monitor the
implementation of the agreement. Apart from reporting on all the
issues on a monthly basis, constituencies will be mobilised around
a particular theme of the GDS each month, such as learnerships,
co-operatives, investment targets.
Nedlac's Dialogue newsletter is published six times per year,
and is available on Nedlac's website; www.nedlac.org.za. It has
over 3000 subscribers.
Contact: Jennifer Wilson on 011 328 4211/083 652 8524