MEDIA STATEMENT
STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL YOUTH DEVELOPMENT AGENCY (NYDA) ON THE APPOINTMENT OF THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (CEO) BY EXECUTIVE CHAIRPERSON, MR SIFISO MTSWENI.
The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) wishes to announce the appointment of the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Waseem Carrim. The NYDA embarked on a process to fill a vacancy of its accounting officer, following the resignation of its former CEO, Mr Khathu Ramukumba.
The NYDA Board set itself a period of four (4) months since the resignation of the former CEO and we are happy that this process was resolved speedily and within the set timeframe.
After publishing job adverts in all spaces, we received a lot of interest from talented South Africans who wanted to contribute to the project of youth development.
Throughout that process, the NYDA Board was able to shortlist and identify the best candidates for the position. We are confident that the Board has made the best choice for the position of the CEO.
Mr Carrim has served as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for the NYDA since 2014, during this period, he has presided over the turn-around of the NYDA finances. The organization has moved from a dire financial state to a viable one.
Over the past 3 financial years, the NYDA has moved from an organization characterized by wasteful and fruitless expenditure to the tune of R100 million to an organization of clean audit opinion. In the last financial year, fruitless and wasteful expenditure amounted to R0.
As CFO, Mr Carrim was able to take the organization from a negative trajectory into a positive one. Mr Carrim is a qualified Chartered Accountant (CA) who studied at the University of Pretoria, amongst other qualifications he also graduated in:
· Masters of Commerce Taxation
· BCom Honours: Accounting Sciences
· BCom: Accounting Sciences
· SAICA : CA
The 30-year-old Carrim is also now one of the youngest CEO’s in the country. His experience include serving as CFO for 4 and a half years, as Manager Public Service Specialist for the KPMG between 2013 and 2014, he was also a Senior Accountant at the same company. Before this he was an Academic Lecturer for the University of Pretoria in the year 2010.
The NYDA Board had also appointed Mr Carrim as Acting Chief Executive Officer since the departure of Mr Ramukumba over 4 months ago. He has presided over the organization in such a manner that managed the transition very well. The NYDA looks set to achieve another 100% performance on all its Key Performance Areas for the financial year 2017/2018.
The NYDA is on course to achieving another clean audit, the governance systems are in place and functional. We have vowed as the Board to ensure that we make the right appointments and the appointment of Mr Carrim is but one of such.
The NYDA Board remains committed to ensuring that the NYDA becomes one of the best run institutions in the country, we are committed to ensuring that the organization manages its resources in a prudent manner such that they reach its intended recipients which are the youth of South Africa.
We remain committed to ensuring that we create an accessible institution that will roll out its presence to all corners of the country especially in rural and township areas.
To date, the NYDA has invested a lot of its limited resources to education and skills training programs including the Solomon Mahlangu Scholarship fund where we invested R73 Million in this financial year alone.
We will this year see its first batch of Graduates of the scholarship fund. We have invested over R70 Million in youth owned enterprises through our grant program which has 72% success rate (which is the highest in Government funding institutions), we have launched the NYDA Mobile App and Mobile Offices to ensure reach far and wide.
We have cut employee costs substantially and kept the wage bill at 35% as required by Parliament, we have invested R10 million in research development through the Youth Development Institute of South Africa (YDISA) in order to ensure we receive academically backed research that will inform our policy advocacy. We have also launched as demanded by the NYDA Act, a Youth Fund and a Youth Skills Fund which we will be roll out over the next financial year.
With a mere budget of R435 million, which amounts to about 0,0004% of the overall budget of Government in a youth dominated society, we are acutely aware that a lot of work still need to be done to reach out to all young people of this country, we are very much aware of the frustrations and we remain committed to attending to them.
The stability of the organization becomes paramount in this regard.
We take this opportunity as the NYDA Board to congratulate Mr Carrim and wish him well in his new responsibilities. The agency will initiate processes of finding a suitable replacement for the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) which Mr Carrim will vacate as of the end of March 2018.
Ends
Media Enquiries: Lerato Gambu on Lerato.Gambu@nyda.gov.za or 064 860 0716
Issued by the National Youth Development Agency
29 March 2018