Illiterate, unemployed will have a future under UDM – Holomisa

The United Democratic Movement (UDM) is to unveil a programme to create jobs for the illiterate and school leavers left out of the employment system because of their circumstances.

UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said the uneducated must be catered for in job creation.

At a rally today at Isaac Wolfson Stadium in KwaZakhele, Port Elizabeth, the party would elaborate on how the illiterate and those who left school for various reasons over the years, should get jobs.

The UDM has increased its support in the Nelson Mandela Bay metro in the last few years and secured the previously ANC strongholds like KwaMagxaki, a middle class black suburb in Port Elizabeth.

Mongamela Bobani of UDM is the mayor of the metro after DA councillor Athol Trollip was ousted late last year.

Holomisa said South Africa had many people who could not be absorbed into the job market due to them being uneducated, while some were left out because they had no tertiary qualifications. He said government must create jobs but that the private sector must also play a role.

The party would also place environmental issues on top of its agenda.

Holomisa promised that a UDM government would ensure a clean environment where people and companies that produced waste took responsibility and ownership of the environment around them.

As a former military leader in the then Transkei homeland and deputy environmental affairs and tourism minister under the ANC, Holomisa encouraged a culture of environmental ownership by residents and industries.

“South Africa is the dirtiest country in the world with waste in every corner,” he said. “Dumping companies are not charged and the municipal workers are not there to collect refuse.”

Holomisa said a UDM-led government would promote investment as a way of growing the economy and creating jobs, while fighting corruption, lawlessness and ensure political stability and policy certainty.

Holomisa was confident his party’s strong stance against corruption and bid to ensure ethics of good governance would help the party increase its votes in the May 8 national election.

Under the UDM, cabinet ministers would be appointed according to their specialities so that they knew what they were doing.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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