Thank you very much hon member, I think you are probably pointing at the need to do further research to try and answer these difficult questions of youth unemployment and so on. As part of these research programmes, we do look into that and ... one of the immediate issues that we have to confront is that there is a major structural change in our economy with a larger chunk of gross domestic product, GDP, now being in the tertiary sector of the
economy, banking and finance; health services; community services; government services; wholesale trade; retail trade, auditing and other services. The tertiary sector probably accounts for over 60% of GDP whilst mining and quarrying accounts for probably another 5- 6%. Manufacturing ... I must be careful in the presence of the Minister of the Department of Trade and Industry ... let me be generous enough to say about 18%. When you define it narrow, you can broaden it. If you broaden it with his Special Economic Zones, SEZs, I am sure it expands a bit. But ... and this is where we might be failing our youth. Because of the major structural changes in the economy, our education and training system has not kept up with the changes. The result is structural unemployment. That is why we are now trying to make these interventions with the Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, and other things. I know that the Minister of Basic Education, the Minister of Higher Education and the Minister of Employment and Labour are probably discussing this changed nature of the structure of our economy and how to respond to it.
We can't wait forever. That is why we have these temporary intervention methods but we should be looking at the medium and long-term interventions. We should be training more of our youth for the tertiary sector, including tourism by the way, and not forgetting that no matter how well the services sector is doing, we
still have to eat - agriculture and agroprocessing - we still have to support manufacturing, we still have to make sure that we continue to mine whatever minerals that we still have which ... South Africa still have quite large deposits of other minerals, so we can't neglect that.
The manner in which we position our training and system, we have to make sure that we achieve those medium to long-term goals.
Xitsonga:
Mufambisi wa ntirho, ndzi khensa swinene eka siku ra namuntlha loko ndzi kotile ku ta haleno ka NCOP, leswaku mi kota ku ndzi tsundzuxa ku vulavula hi ririmi ra hina ra Xitsonga. Ndza khensa swinene.
English: