The House Chairperson for Committees and Oversight in the National Assembly, Mr Cedric Frolick, has made a commitment to young South Africans that Parliament will continue, through its oversight role, to ensure that government effectively implements youth empowerment policies.
Delivering the keynote address in the Youth Colloquium organised by Parliament’s Research Unit, Mr Frolick said the institution takes its work of holding the executive accountable seriously and understands that young people deserve more than good intentions written into strategies that gather dust.
“It is easy to pass good policy, but it is much harder to hold government and its partners accountable for delivering on it. Our oversight task is to ensure that the policies and systems meant to open doors for young people are implemented, funded, and monitored for results,” said Mr Frolick.
Speaking on the national challenges of youth unemployment and the mismatch between the skills system and the labour market, the House Chairperson emphasised the importance of youth participation in policy formulation, especially on matters that concern young people in the country.
“You understand the labour market you are trying to enter better than any of us on this platform. You understand which skills programmes work, and which are box-ticking exercises. You understand where technology has opened a door for you and where it has shut one. We need that knowledge. Policy built without it is policy built blind,” said the House Chairperson.
He said the mismatch between what the education and training system produces and what the labour market was a sign of a policy gap that requires urgent attention. “We continue to see young people graduate into unemployment, not for lack of effort, but because the pipeline between the classroom and the workplace was never properly built. Employers say they cannot find the skills they need and graduates say they cannot find the jobs they were promised. Both are telling the truth, and the problem sits in the gap between them, and closing that gap is squarely a task for policy, for Parliament's oversight role, and for genuine partnership with industry and educators,” he said.
On the question of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) that is reshaping industries and redefining jobs, Mr Frolick called on the young people to embrace opportunities presented by technology advancement.
“Digital and AI skills are creating entirely new pathways into work and into entrepreneurship that did not exist for previous generations. The Innovation Expo taking place alongside this colloquium today is proof of that. It showcases youth-led solutions in technology, in green innovation, in the creative industries, in community development, developed not by government, not by large corporates, but by young South Africans who decided to build the answer themselves. That is what innovation from the ground up looks like, and Parliament has a responsibility to notice it, to support it, and to remove the obstacles in its way,” he said.
Mr Frolick also told the colloquium that Parliament will support policy and budgets to equal access to quality in education, reliable infrastructure, connectivity, and opportunities.
“A young person with a laptop, stable data and a mentor is playing a different game to a young person without any of those things, even if both are equally talented, equally determined. If we allow the digital and green economies to simply replicate the old inequalities in new form, we will have wasted this moment,” he said.
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