Pretoria - The banning of labour brokers and recruitment agencies at some companies based in Rosslyn industrial area were among the demands made by a group of graduates from Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) Ga-Rankuwa campus during their march at Tshwane’s economic hub yesterday.
The graduates, under the umbrella of a non-profit organisation called Step Into the New Era, bemoaned the fact that they were often overlooked for employment by companies such as BMW, Nissan, Feltex and South African Breweries.
Disgruntled graduates chanted songs and expressed their dissatisfaction with the companies’ recruitment approaches.
They gathered in the morning at Ernest Oppenheimer Street before they marched to targeted businesses, with the metro police keeping an eye on them.
Their spokesperson, Goitsemang Aphane, said recruitment by labour brokers often left Ga-Rankuwa TUT campus graduates in the lurch.
“We have realised that they are using labour brokers to hire people and we want to correct that.
“They should not use agencies to hire people. We want them to hire people directly and when I say people, I mean us as graduates from Ga-Rankuwa TUT campus,” Aphane said.
Marchers also raised awareness about youth unemployment and the fact that companies no longer advertised job opportunities and training programmes on social media.
Aphane said graduates embarked on a peaceful march to raise awareness about unemployment and to call for a collaboration between Ga-Rankuwa TUT campus and businesses in Rosslyn industrial when they wanted to recruit workers.
Aphane said the non-profit organisation was targeting the industrial area because they have not absorbed graduates from TUT campus despite that the manufacturing companies were located closer to the institution.
“One of the companies that we visited was the South African Breweries. We are their biggest supporters and yet it hasn’t even absorbed one graduate. Basically we are just going there to ask for collaboration so that they can consider us when recruiting workers,” he said.
Marchers wanted companies to make a commitment to hire them in future.
“We understand that we don’t have experience but we want to learn. We want them to give us a chance so that we can show them what we are capable of doing.
We specialise in finance, internal audit and also economics, among other skills,” Aphane said.
Before yesterday’s march, he said, the organisation made several attempts to reach out to companies but they didn’t receive any response.
Pretoria News