Hundreds of youth who formed part of a multimillion-rand skills project that President Jacob Zuma personally launched, have been languishing at home with nothing to do for seven months.
The 800 unplaced War on Leaks project’s trainees have been getting their R1500 stipends each month from the Department of Water and Sanitation, despite doing nothing.
This means the department, currently in the news for allegedly being broke, would have paid roughly R8.4-million to the unplaced trainees by the end of this month.
The trainees were supposed to be placed in municipalities or private companies.
Sowetan gathered that Rand Water, the project’s implementing agency, failed to place the youth for practical training after they completed their theoretical studies in July last year.
Zuma’s spokesman Bongani Ngqulunga referred Sowetan to the water and sanitation department. Department spokesman Sputnik Ratau said there were 800 youths who still had nowhere to train…..more