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Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe says that South Africa is sitting on a jobs time bomb. We agree with him. The question is: what is the government’s plan to defuse it?
 
The New Growth Path is touted as the answer, but it is not really a plan at all. It is a wish-list of nice-sounding targets. What we need is a Jobs Plan. And we need it fast.
 
As the Deputy President says, 2.8 million people between 18 and 24 are not employed or being trained for future employment. They are our lost generation. We should be doing everything we can to help them find a job.
 
And yet every time a move is made towards creating jobs, it is shot down by the ANC’s alliance partners and meekly shelved. Ministers Pravin Gordhan and Trevor Manuel know what the answers are, but weak leadership at the top is preventing the implementation of pro-jobs policies.
 
It is not enough for the Presidency to talk about a jobs time bomb if there is no political will to make the hard decisions. The truth is that we can reverse the growing jobs crisis. The Democratic Alliance (DA) has a number of constructive proposals, including:
 
• Implementing a wage subsidy 
• Reforming the labour market to increase flexibility 
• Instituting a one-year tax holiday for new small businesses 
• Giving tax rebates for skills development 
• Increasing investment in infrastructure 
• Establishing export processing zones 
 
This is what a DA government would do to defuse the time bomb. We would not allow vested interests to hold the future of our young people to ransom. It is time the ANC started putting the unemployed first.