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Cape Town – In response to Fin24 users, Paul Johnson and Ray McLellan's call for job creation ideas, Terry Bell writes:
Government needs to play a much bigger role if there is to be any serious job creation. That is the consensus of suggestions received about ideas for trying to tackle the problem of unemployment. But without exception the call is not for government to provide jobs.
Respondents to the call feel that it is the job of government to create an environment in which more people can be employed.
This was spelled out in the contribution by Paul Johnson: the suggestion that job creation be a condition for the award of state tenders.
This links in to a suggestion made several years ago by the former general secretary of the Federation of Unions (Fedusa), Chez Milani.
Milani argued that labour intensive tenders for work should be prioritised. He pointed out that roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects could be completed in the same time frame, at the same cost, using mainly labour rather than machinery. In the process, workers would also gain skills.
In the same vein, Charles Maisel, founder of the Men at the Side of the Road project, points out that roads, built by the Romans more than a thousand years ago, still exist.
He suggests that, with the vast amount of rock extracted by mining, similar roads could be built that would require considerable labour and would be both long lasting and require little maintenance. Using modern stone cutting techniques, skills would be learned and the roads would be of better quality.
An engineer also contacted me to point out that there are approximately 11.5 million formal households in South Africa.
If each of these could be equipped with solar water systems, he maintains that the saving in electricity would solve Eskom’s current problems. If the government agreed to - and perhaps subsidised - such a project, this would lead to massive job creation in the manufacture, installation and maintenance of the systems.
The saving of power is also the focus of the email by Ray McLellan, who, together with his engineer friend, Andre Kotze, has developed what he has dubbed the “magic geyser”, a method of heating water to 60 deg C on a gas ring or primus stove in a fraction of the time it usually takes.
Ten litres can be heated in this way in ten minutes. He explains that this was a “spin off” from work he was doing on a safer and more efficient paraffin stove.
The job creation aspect would be in sales to rural and urban communities who still do not have access to other means of heating water. He want to supply "micro entrepreneurs" to take this product to market.
More suggestions are welcome. But please send by email and not leave telephone messages.
* Add your voice or just drop Terry a labour question. Follow Terry on twitter @telbelsa.
Disclaimer: All articles and letters published on Fin24 have been independently written by members of the Fin24 community. The views of users published on Fin24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent those of Fin24.
