By Hlengiwe Ndlovu | 2018-07-19

THIS time around, there will be no miracle cash bonanzas making their way into young people’s bank accounts as the Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund (YERF) has announced it will only pay approved loans directly to equipment suppliers.

 This was disclosed yesterday by Fund Manager Bhekizwe Maziya at the Mountain Inn in a stakeholders’ forum held over a breakfast session.

Maziya said by so doing, the fund is guarding against repeating old mistakes because before, loans were paid directly to young people’s accounts, which resulted in all kinds of chaos as the loan recipients ended up misusing the funds they had been entrusted with.

“Instead of establishing businesses, young people bought themselves cellphones and other flashy things with the loans they were given,” Maziya noted.

Before being disbanded, the Youth Fund disbursed loans amounting to E10 million, E6.9 million of which has not been recovered to date, hence the current administration has tightened its checks and balances.

Minister of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs David Ngcamphalala said even though government does not contemplate suspending legal action against the loan defaulters, critical questions to the extent to which loan recipients were capacitated have not been fully answered.

In the meantime, the minister said youth owned businesses can only thrive in an environment where government makes a special provision to reserve specific quotas for youth-owned businesses.

“If for instance, specific tenders are set aside for young people to install guard rails in the construction of the country’s roads, then this would amount to something because government would be showing its support to youth owned businesses,” said the minister.

Meanwhile, Maziya also affirmed YERF’s commitment to supporting youth owned businesses in their own procurement processes.

“It is well known that young entrepreneurs are equally capable of delivering the same services as other well-established SMEs, which is why we have reserved some of our tenders for young people,’ he said.

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