South Africa will meet a 2014 target to halve unemployment, a cabinet minister said on Saturday, despite the prospect of rising job losses in the global financial crisis. Unemployment has remained stubbornly high in Africa's biggest economy and fears are mounting the official jobless rate could rise above the current 21.9 percent recorded at the end of 2008.
"It's going to take a lot of work, it needs a lot of dedication and energy but I think its achievable by 2014, I'm confident," Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge told Reuters in an interview. Slumping global demand has placed thousands of South African jobs at risk in the key labour-intensive mining, manufacturing and automobile sectors, potentially swelling the ranks of about 3.9 million who are unemployed.
Doidge was speaking after the launch of government's 4 billion rand ($433.8 million) expanded public works programme, the second phase of which aims at creating 4.5 million jobs over the next five years. "It's the most significant, the most targeted programme because its uniqueness is that it cuts across all government departments," said Doidge.
"Its not a pick and shovel job only, it involves health workers, it involves community safety..." Reaching those goals may be difficult given current financial conditions. A global economic slowdown and weak household demand have knocked the economy, resulting in its first contraction in a decade in the fourth quarter of 2008 and expectations of recession.
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