Gauteng’s Nasi Ispani recruitment drive receives over 1,3 million applications

The Nasi iSpani recruitment programme, which was launched by Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi last month, has attracted over 1 300 000 applications.1 273 604 of these are online applications and 73 396 are paper-based applications.

The highest vacancies applied for are general worker, administration clerk and cleaner vacancies.

The recruitment programme is a Gauteng Provincial Government initiative aimed at addressing unemployment and promoting access to job opportunities available within the Gauteng Provincial Government.

“The overwhelming response to the Nasi Ispani programme showed the enormous scale of unemployment in South Africa. Thousands of young people responded to the advertised positions, and what became clear is that many young people are desperate for jobs. This programme allowed us to see the faces behind the unemployment statistics,” said Premier Lesufi.

Premier Panyaza Lesufi was speaking during a press conference aimed at giving an update on the nasi ispani recruitment programme on Friday.

According to a report presented by the Department of e-gov Cyril Baloyi during the briefing 45% of the applicants are males and 55% are females. Most applicants are of African descent (98.8%) and 1,2% of the applicants are from the White, Indian and Colored communities.

“The province has a population of 5 million young people; almost half of them, 2,3 million, could be classified as not in education, employment,and training. In response to these depressing numbers, we launched the biggest assault on poverty alleviation and unemployment that this country through the Nasi Ispani Programme, which ensures that jobs and job opportunities are created for the millions of unemployed youths”, said Premier Lesufi.

He added that mass unemployment is a colossal problem that the government cannot solve on its own, but requires a social compact involving communities, labour, and the private sector.

Premier Lesufi also unveiled additional provincial government interventions to deal with the unsuccessful applicants.

“While we know that only some people who have applied will be successful, as the provincial government, we are creating an unemployment database where all the unsuccessful applicants’ details and qualifications will be captured. Once more employment opportunities become available, recruitment for short-term employment will be from this database”, said Premier Lesufi.

The provincial government also intends to make it compulsory for all companies awarded tenders by the provincial government to recruit from the unemployment database.

Recruitment plan

“As is the case with any recruitment process, our human resource personnel have a recruitment plan in place to streamline the process. Next week the team will conclude capturing the applications received on 16 June 2023 from the various walk-in centres,” said Premier Lesufi.

These will be packaged for collection by the various Gauteng Provincial Government departments. This will be followed by registering, sorting,capturing, and acknowledging manual applications received after 17 June and 14 July 2023. These will also be packaged for collection by GPG departments. Each department will start the shortlisting process, conduct interviews, and ultimately offer suitable candidates job offers. He added that on Wednesday, 27 July, the provincial government will unveil the first cohort of candidates to undertake solar panel training through the GPG and Merseta partnership which was announced in May 2023.

“Let us all work together to defeat unemployment in our province. We need more jobs and less talk,” concluded Premier Lesufi.

By Gauteng Provincial Government.