​Lerato Mailoane
The Gauteng Provincial Government's Nasi iSpani recruitment drive has attracted over 1.3 million applicants, both online and paper-based applications. 
The recruitment programme, a Gauteng Provincial Government initiative was launched last month and is aimed at addressing unemployment and promoting access to job opportunities available within the Provincial Government. 
"The province has a population of 5 million young people; almost half of them,2,3 million, could be classified as not in education, employment, and training. In response to these depressing numbers, we launched the biggest assault on poverty alleviation and unemployment that this country through the Nasi Ispani Programme, which ensures that jobs and job opportunities are created for the millions of unemployed youths", said Premier Lesufi.
Addressing the media on Friday, 14 June Premier Lesufi said, 1 273 604 of these are online applications and 73 396 are paper-based applications. The highest vacancies applied for are general worker, administration clerk and cleaner vacancies.
"The overwhelming response to the Nasi Ispani programme showed the enormous scale of unemployment in South Africa. Thousands of young people responded to the advertised positions, and what became clear is that many young people are desperate for jobs. This programme allowed us to see the faces behind the unemployment statistics," said Premier Lesufi.
According to Premier Lesufi, most applicants are of African descent (98.8%) and 1,2% of the applicants are from White, Indian and Coloured communities. 45% of the applicants are males and 55%, are females. 
"This is not a gimmick, and we are excited that we will continue to recruit people, we want to assure our people that these jobs are real," Lesufi added.
Head of Department, Cyril Baloyi also gave a breakdown of the Nasi iSpani applicants. "We can account for each CV we have received. Most of the applicants are between the ages of 25 – 35. We envisage that we will get an additional 200-300 applicants by the end of business today as it is the closing date.
Premier Lesufi also unveiled additional provincial government interventions to deal with some of the unsuccessful applicants.
"While we know that not everyone who applied will be successful, as the provincial government, we are creating an unemployment database where all the unsuccessful applicants' details and qualifications will be captured. Once more employment opportunities become available, recruitment for short-term employment will be from this database", said Premier Lesufi.