Millions of rands have been set aside by the Department of Labour’s Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) to train over 7 000 former mine workers and unemployed youth at the O.R Tambo region in the Eastern Cape.

The beneficiaries will be taught business management, plant and beef farming by the Walter Sisulu University and Ntinga Development Agency.

Deputy Minister of Labour, Nkosi Phatekile Holomisa, says the launch of the initiative will help fight poverty in rural areas.

“Many of these people when they are no longer needed by the mining sector, they come here and they don’t have any skills and they don’t have any money because they are lowly paid and they are sick.”

“They are no longer in a position to sustain themselves and their families, but because they contribute together with other workers to the Unemployment insurance Fund. We felt as the department, some of the money that is available must be used to empower these former workers.”

(Source: SABC News)