State of the nation address

According to Times live Zuma dismissed all critics that his speech was vague and lacklustre. This statement has a lot of truth to it as I feel that he failed to mention a lot of issues, better yet the solutions to many dilemmas that our country faces. He was repeating himself most the time and he failed to show how the past plans have progressed or can still progress.

Zuma insisted that the 480000 job opportunities that he announced in his state of the nation address that have been created in the year, were verifiable. Instead of opposition parties dismissing this figure,he said that they should rather appreciate the fact that the government had acted to "cushion" citizens from the effects of the recession.

During the 2009 State of Address, Zuma announced that the Expanded Public Works Programme would create 500 000 work opportunities by December 2009. He reiterated that these jobs were not mainstream economy and that these jobs opportunities were created to provide unemployed people with an income, work experience, and training opportunities. He was pleased to announce that by the end of December, they had created more than 480 000 public works job opportunities, which is 97% of the target they had set.

Their industrial policy action plan and their new focus on green jobs will build stronger and more labour absorbing industries. Regarding job creation Proposals were tabled to subsidise the cost of hiring younger workers, to encourage firms to take on inexperienced staff.

Many have said that the speech was full of promises one being to stem job loses, fight crime and improve the lives of many people, but provided little way of measurable targets or budget allocations. Statistics South Africa said that unemployment fell to 24,3% in the third quarter, with the economy creating 89 000 new jobs during the final three months of last year.

The uptick in the fourth quarter left job losses for the year at 870 000, and stats SA officials warned that most of the jobs created were in the informal sector, pointing to still-tough conditions in formal industries. People who have stopped looking for work, fell slightly to 34,2% from 34.4%

The total number of unemployed people stood at 4,16million in the three months to December, while the number of employed people increased by 89 0000 to 12,97million.

Referencing

Mandy Rossouw, Cape Town, South Africa-Feb 11 2010 20:42pm

-http://.mg. co. za/article/2010-02-16-all-eyes-on-Gordan-ahead-of-Budget-Speech