If the government is serious about reducing unemployment to less than 15percent by 2014, President Thabo Mbeki needs to rapidly reverse the centralised wage negotiations and the legislative rigidity of the country's labour market.

This was the view of the DA's parliamentary leader, Sandra Botha, when she addressed journalists in Johannesburg yesterday.

Botha, together with party leader Helen Zille and chairman Joe Seremane, was previewing President Thabo Mbeki's state of the nation address to be delivered in parliament on Friday.

Botha said the ANC's target of halving unemployment by 2014 will remain a pipe dream unless the centralised wage talks were done away with.

"In the context of a looming global recession, the quest to attain the crucial 6percent growth level is now under threat and will be impossible to attain unless the president takes bold steps to address the situation. This threat is compounded by the effects of the energy crisis." - Eric Naki