Durban-Over four hundred delegates participating in the Human Settlements Vision 2030 Youth Summit  have called for new human settlements development initiatives to promote social cohesion and urged that rural development should be complimented by secondary markets such as food processing or refinery plants.

These calls form part of the resolutions of the Summit - themed: ‘Youth in action creating sustainable human settlements’ - which also called for the spatial development to promote local economic development and maintain existing social networks.

The Summit also resolved that good moral practices should be preserved and rewarded at communal level with communities being pioneers of social cohesion.

“We furthermore call for incentives for not migrating to urban areas by providing agrarian development with strong emphasis on land redistribution, resource mobilization and introduce diverse and technologically advanced agrarian programmes ,” said the delegates.

In addition to this, the summit as part of the resolutions called for the department to set aside a 30% quota for youth contractors, escalate and promote youth preferential procurement.

“Contractors that employ 70% of young people should be prioritized and a database of young people aligned to human settlements programme be develop at the same time establish linkages with the private sector on placement of trained young people,” said delegates said.

Furthermore, they added that youth incubator programmes be rolled out and sustained beyond construction to the full human settlement development value chain and establish access to the youth job fund for human settlement programmes.

The delegates also called for the fast tracking of well located publicly-owned land for human settlements purposes.

“Human Settlements policy in relation to land acquisition should be reviewed so as to address the observed limitations and slow pace of spatial restructuring. There is also a need to determine priority areas for human settlements development in well located land”.

In order for these resolutions to succeed, delegates said there is a need for the amendment of laws that impede speedy implementation of human settlements policy.

These included amendments of the constitution to deal onerous compensation and management laws, introduce laws that compel organs of state to align and co-ordinate their plans and programmes.

“We also call for the issue of land to be addressed decisively so that land vests in the State for shared and developmental purposes.”