Louise Upston visited Invercargill yesterday as one of the speakers at a Murihiku Regeneration wānanga, where she spoke about human capital.
Talking to the Otago Daily Times after the event, she said it was exciting to be part of such an event as Southland was a region which had been focusing on a “plan B” or the long-term future of the region and as part of this it was important to ensure employment opportunities for people locally.
She said at present there were more people in the country receiving the jobseeker benefit than in the past.
“So for Southland, that’s 3345 – just, you know, 5.5% of the working-age population.
“The group that I have a particular focus on … is those who are aged 18 to 24, so there’s 800 in that area [in Southland].”
She said about 50% of the jobseeker benefit numbers had come in the past year, meaning they were people who had been in work recently.
“It’s really important to reconnect them to a job as quickly as possible. We do have a big challenge in that we’ve inherited benefit dependency.
“So a large number of people have been staying on welfare for longer and we just have to work harder.”
Mrs Upston said she had a meeting with Front-line Training Consultancy and also held periodic catch-ups with ministers to take a unified approach to the problem.
She believed the situation in the region was completely fixable.
“Southland’s really great in terms of collaborating around where those opportunities are, making sure that they’re seizing the opportunities, getting ready for it … Just make sure that as part of that planning, you’re thinking about how we ensure that New Zealanders and locals are picking up those employment opportunities and that we’re also picking up those that are MSD clients.”
Mrs Upston said an important part of this was training and Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment and Tertiary Education and Skills Minister Penny Simmonds agreed.
She said the vocational education sector was very important, whether it was at the polytechnic level or work-based training.
“We know that about 80% of those that train locally, stay locally. So it’s part of the message that Minister Upston is bringing, that we should be employing locals, we should be training locals and we should be then getting them into employment and taking them through their career development.
luisa.girao@odt.co.nz
