SKILLS TRAINING NEWS

Graduates failing to get state jobs

 

Thousands of newly qualified social work graduates, who paid for their studies with state bursaries on the basis that they would work for the state after graduating, have been left high and dry across the country.

© Tom Mc Nemar – 123RF.com

There are a further 5000 state-scholarship funded social work students in South Africa who are poised to enter the university system on the same basis "that they will work for the state when they graduate".

Not a single social work graduate was employed by the state in the Eastern Cape this financial year.

Many of the state scholarship graduates who protested at the department's headquarters in King William's Town recently claimed that the provincial department was also not releasing them from their contracts to work for non-governmental organisations.

This was denied by the government.

National Department of Social Development spokeswoman Lumka Oliphant said the Eastern Cape was among the provinces which had large numbers of graduates who could not be recruited into state employment.

Oliphant said the department spent about R65,000 on each scholarship student a year.

Source: Herald