The Department of Communications (DOC) has started a dialogue with the ICT sector to facilitate a new growth trajectory that will allow for the creation of sustainable jobs across the industry.
On Friday, the CEOs and chairpersons of SA's top 30 ICT companies met with communications minister Roy Padayachie, in Johannesburg, to discuss ways of building and strengthening partnerships between the public and private sectors.
Padayachie noted that the new growth plan (NGP) targets the development of broadband infrastructure as one of the main areas to fast-track economic development, including job creation.
Creating jobs
The minister alluded to President Jacob Zuma's recent State of the Nation speech, in which he outlined government's job creation targets - to create five-million jobs and reduce unemployment from 25% to 15% over the next 10 years.
“More specifically, the NGP framework targets 100 000 new jobs by 2020 in the knowledge-intensive sectors of ICT, higher education, healthcare, mining-related technologies, pharmaceuticals and biotechnologies,” he stated.
According to Padayachie, the DOC has put together a draft proposal of how ICTs can contribute to the job creation imperative.
“We have set up a departmental task team on job creation, whose responsibility it is to co-ordinate the various efforts of the department, as well as the entire ICT industry, in order to report on progress.
“We will also endeavour to establish an ICT industry-wide working group on job creation, whose purpose will be to facilitate the identification of priority areas which will create jobs. This working group will invite input from industry companies to propose priorities and make commitments to job creation targets,” he noted.
Padayachie added that the ICT sector is ready to make its substantive contribution as an enabler to economic growth, and as such, the DOC has identified the following two strategic outcomes: universal access and connectivity in the rural areas and using technology to meet the needs of the South African people.
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