The protest march to City Hall planned by the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) has been halted.
According to UPM convenor Ayanda Kota, in spite of residents’ recent complaints about poor service delivery, it was felt that the UPM does not want to “antagonise” any persons within the Grahamstown
business community and threaten the possibility of further discussions taking place.
The protest march to City Hall planned by the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) has been halted.
According to UPM convenor Ayanda Kota, in spite of residents’ recent complaints about poor service delivery, it was felt that the UPM does not want to “antagonise” any persons within the Grahamstown
business community and threaten the possibility of further discussions taking place.
Instead, Kota has announced that a meeting is to be set up between the major role players, which will be facilitated by the Rhodes Community Engagement Unit (RCEU).
Margie Maistry, RCEU Director says: “Our job is to get bodies such as NGOs and municipal bodies together and find the gaps in the current [unemployment]situation.
It is simply laying a platform whereby people can start talking.” “We are optimistic and have good faith,” said Kota on the UPM’s feeling towards the upcoming meeting as he states that up until now, there has been a whole lot of talk and that in fact “nothing has been done.”
When Grocott’s Mail spoke to the National Arts Festival committee CEO Tony Lankester, he was taken back at Kota’s statement.
“We have made numerous interventions such as the Innovation Hub project,” said Lankester. This project saw the gathering of Festival organisers, Rhodes University as well as Makana Municipality where ideas were brainstormed to aid a select number of unemployed people through training and providing an initial start up capital of R5 000.
The group, which showed potential in the skills of entrepreneurship, ran their businesses for the duration of the Arts Festival.
Lankester did however mention afterwards that the UPM, although being invited to the meeting, did not attend.
Statistics obtained from the Festival committee have shown that of the 290 staff employed for the 2010 Festival, 61% are listed as unemployed while 7% have permanent jobs.
Of these employed staff, 91% are black, coloured and Indian people. However, it was not clear if these are citizens of Grahamstown or not.
Local unemployed residents however, are still not satisfied with the way in which the job selection process for the Arts Festival is facilitated, stating that the Festival committee outsources job recruitment to an outside body which, according to them, gives preference to persons who already have permanent jobs and are viewed by the Festival committee as experienced and reliable enough.
Residents commented on these persons, which include principals and teachers working as pool cashiers during the Festival, saying that it is not even necessary for them to have to re-apply after being accepted to work at the Festival when they first applied for their positions.
“They simply receive a letter the following year asking if they would like to work at the Festival again,” said a local unemployed resident, Julia Kuscus, who has given up trying to apply after not receiving a letter of acceptance for numerous years.
Lankester, in response to the issue of job selection, stated that “the selection process is done by ourselves and we have made unemployed persons our priority when it comes to job recruitment.”
The meeting is due to take place on Friday 23 July and will focus on establishing a dialogue between the various parties involved in order to combat the issue of unemployment within Grahamstown. Kota then added that “an invitation will be extended to Festival organisers.”
