00:00Within the first 24 hours of the launch of the National Job Recruitment Drive, the need for employment in the
00:06country was evident.
00:08Minister of Public Administration and Artificial Intelligence Dominic Smith revealed that 38,000 applications were received during the first day.
00:16That skyrocketed to over 110,000 applications in the end.
00:21But just over four months in, the outcome of those applications are unknown.
00:25Save and accept for the 1,801 filled vacancies under the Ministry of Works and Infrastructure.
00:32That's out of 20,000 plus jobs which the government stated were available at the time across the various ministries.
00:39In an interview prior to the sitting of the Senate, the question was posed to Smith.
00:44Can you give us an update on how many people have actually been employed based on that?
00:50How many vacant positions and so on still to be rolled out?
00:53Yeah, I think there were a couple of news articles that spoke to that.
01:00Individually, but not as a collective?
01:02I don't know how accurate those statements were, but I can say that it's an active part of the government
01:08to find ways to employ people.
01:10According to Minister Smith, the government is taking a lot of steps in terms of getting that done.
01:16But what about the 20,000 plus jobs which were advertised for phase one of the recruitment drive?
01:22In due time, more information will be passed on to you guys.
01:26Would you be able to tell us how much or how far along phase one have you actually gotten to
01:31in terms of the actual employment of individuals?
01:34Once the information becomes readily available for release, it will be released.
01:38So you can hold for now and more information will be provided soon.
01:42With the information presently in the public domain, the outstanding vacancies to be filled range from around 17,400 to
01:5018,200,
01:52as the Works Ministry was planning to hire around 800 more people.
01:56For now, more questions than answers remain, including if the jobs are sustainable by way of contract length,
02:03the amount of vacancies per ministry, and so on.
02:07Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
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