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Gallo Images<\/p>\n
Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel. Photo: GCIS<\/p>\n
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Durban – For the media the National Development Plan \u201cwas not scandalous enough to make front page news\u201d, Planning Minister Trevor Manuel said at the opening session of the 15th African Renaissance Conference in Durban on Thursday. <\/p>\n
Manuel\u2019s retort was in response to criticism that the plan was not being communicated and was not yet part of the nation\u2019s psyche. <\/p>\n
Steuart Pennington, noted speaker and chief executive of South Africa: The Good News, said there did not seem to be a concerted effort by the government to sell the vision to the nation. Every South African, especially teachers, needed to know what the NDP was about, Pennington said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Manuel admitted more needed to be done to make ordinary people aware of the plan, but said the media needed to play a bigger part. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan is there and now it is about transferring ownership. It is not owned by the 26 commissioners on the National Planning Commission, but needs to be owned by the nation,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Manuel said the plan had the full support of all political parties, despite being unpopular in some quarters, in what was clearly a reference to Cosatu. <\/p>\n
The union federation has castigated the plan for being too \u201cpro-business\u201d and has claimed it is an adaptation of the government\u2019s Gear (Growth, Employment and Redistribution) strategy of the 1990s. <\/p>\n
General-secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa), Irvin Jim, has dubbed the plan a \u201cright-wing\u201d strategy borrowed from the DA. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are those who reject the NDP without proposing an alternative, and their criticism comes in ideological language. They don\u2019t provide workable solutions,\u201d Manuel said. <\/p>\n
Bheki Sibiya, the chief executive of the Chamber of Mines, who said he was speaking in his personal capacity, said the \u201cnoises from the unions\u201d were disturbing and he questioned if there had been enough consultation in the plan\u2019s development. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Manuel said achieving the plan was like running the Comrades Marathon and would require effort and dogged determination. The plan\u2019s long-term vision included bringing down unemployment to 14 percent by 2020 and 6 percent by 2030. This required an average growth rate of 5.4 percent over the next 17 years. <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gallo Images Minister in the Presidency Trevor Manuel. Photo: GCIS Durban – For the media the National Development Plan \u201cwas not scandalous enough to make front page news\u201d, Planning Minister Trevor Manuel said at the opening session of the 15th African Renaissance Conference in Durban on Thursday. Manuel\u2019s retort was in response to criticism that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-19962","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}