KAROO NEWS - Youth employed by the Department of Transport in the Dr Beyers Naudé municipality can finally rest easy after the DA moved an urgent motion in the Eastern Cape Legislature last week Wednesday to ensure payment of their government stipends. 

The Department of Transport employs these youth through the National Youth Service learnership, but their stipends have not been paid out for two months due to the collapsing South African Postal Service in the region. 

Thousands of other workers – Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) workers and Sakisizwe workers – across the municipality have also been unable to access their stipends.

The Post Offices in Graaff-Reinet and Willowmore are closed, the Jansenville Post Office has been closed because a staff member is off sick, and the Aberdeen Post Office has not been forwarded funds to pay any additional beneficiaries. 

The youth's plight was first brought to the attention of the DA by their Dr Beyers Naudé Constituency Leader, Samantha Graham-Maré MP. 

"Marginalised youth, who are supposedly being empowered through the National Youth Service learnership with the Department of Transport, are instead entering their second month of not being paid for services rendered. 

These much-needed funds are the only thing keeping these individuals and their families from hunger and abject poverty, and not paying them is tantamount to taking food out of their mouths," said Graham-Maré. 

Graham-Maré escalated the issue to the DA Shadow MEC for Transport, Marshall von Buchenroder MPL, who then raised it in the Eastern Cape Legislature. 

The motion compelling the Department to identify and immediately implement an alternative to pay the youth's stipends was unanimously approved.

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