The agency’s chairman, Andile Lungisa, said that, with 70% of the country’s jobless under 35, a more rigorous approach was needed to deal with the unemployment rate and the slow pace of youth development.

Speaking in Pretoria yesterday, Lungisa said the amendment of the National Youth Development Agency Act – which he hopes will reach parliament by June – would force both the public and private sectors to implement the national youth policy approved by the cabinet in 2009.

“We are currently amending the act. We want the act to be able to bite, and then we can hold people accountable, we can take people to jail, we can take people to the Human Rights Commission,” he said.

Lungisa said he hoped that government departments – under the oversight of Performance Minister Collins Chabane – would implement the policy guidelines.

He said the agency would use the National Economic Development and Labour Council to ask companies to promote youth development.

Lungisa said he was concerned that, in the private sector, youth development was moving at the pace of a “Beetle” instead of a “C-class” Mercedes-Benz.

He said some companies allocated their channelled funds from their charity budgets when asked to invest in youth development.

He also criticised the DA’s continued calls for Cosatu to stop opposing the implementation of the Treasury’s proposed youth wage subsidy at the council.

The launching of the subsidy, a R5-billion tax credit to be introduced over three years, was postponed this month.

Cosatu said the subsidy would lead to employers hiring younger, inexperienced workers to get the subsidy, and that they would then off-load their older employees.

“What will happen with the implementation of the subsidy: you put 200 young South Africans on the subsidy and then you subsidise big business.

“After two years … they are going to be off-loaded, they are going to go back on the street and take in other people. Is that addressing any challenges of unemployment?

“Why don’t we take that money and invest in skills, where young people will be able to start their own projects, where they can create their own jobs?”

Lungisa said South Africa should promote entrepreneurship, and cited Vietnam, which he said has an unemployment rate of only 3.5%.