Thulas Nxesi

"Minister Oliphant was a real sister to me. At the level of work in relation to Public Works and this department, she was always there"

"What I will not do, is to come here and change things especially at the policy level. There is a weakness that whenever there is a new minister there are new programs. This is as if, these people are not coming from the same policy background where we are supposed to be guided by the same policy. This does not mean that when we see weaknesses in a particular area we cannot call for a review"

"It becomes necessary or if it becomes necessary, we will have to see where we contain costs. But more important, how can we mitigate the effects of the likely rise of unemployment"

"As a department we are far from helpless. There are resources available that could be better utilized. There are current programs which could be up scaled. There may be past programs which need to be revived. So this is what I’m asking of the DDG’s and heads of the various programs, to point to the areas where we can make gains in terms of employment creation and intensive training and retraining. We have to cut the red tapes, improve the operations of the labour market especially for the small businesses"

"The president is still going to elaborate further on his thinking around the reconfiguration of the department. And I imagine this process will come to act with the upcoming SONA which is scheduled for the 20th of June"

"The reality is that we cannot give employers more than 26 years to transform and they choose not to move. What we are saying now with the Employment Equity Act amendments is that Minister will have the power to negotiate sector by sector - and say let us agree on targets. Each and every company must put targets in place and these will not be imposed by the Minister – but will be set up by the industry"

"a target is put in place to be met. The targets are flexible in that they offer a leeway to provide reasons for non-achievement"