No, YES is not a viable solution to sustainable youth employment
Young people need high-level skills not menial jobs, trainers argue
The new Youth Employment Service (YES) scheme, designed to create a million paid internships, wastes money by feeding people into low-skilled, dead-end jobs, the founders of the successful Umuzi Academy in Johannesburg argue.The YES campaign launched last month by President Cyril Ramaphosa will give participants a year of work to enhance their CV but it won’t give them skills to progress up the career ladder, and companies cannot absorb all those low-grade workers, says Umuzi co-director Gilbert Pooley.Pooley and his lifelong friend Andrew Levy have been running the Umuzi Training Centre for four years, qualifying students as workplace-ready graphic designers, advertising and marketing specialists, photographers and, more recently, as data analysts and computer coders for the technology and financial services sectors.It is funded by companies that offer work experience placements and that have provided 80% of the graduates with full-time jobs. About 16 advertising agencies support t...
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