The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) continues to prove its viability as an important catalyst for creation of decent work opportunities with the release of the fourth and last quarter results for the 2010/11 financial year.
The EPWP created 643 116 work opportunities in the 2010/11 financial year. This figure reflects an impressive achievement of the programme’s set-target of 642 000 work opportunities for the 2010/11 financial year.
This achievement proves yet again that the programme is making a significant impact in contributing towards government’s concerted efforts of reducing unemployment and poverty by 2014.
The sector breakdown of work opportunities created under the EPWP in the 2010/11 financial year is as follows:
Infrastructure Sector: 277 100Environment and Culture Sector: 107 189
Social Sector: 131 979
Non-State Sector
(Community Works programme): 92 136
(Non profit organisations): 34 712
Total: 643 116
Speaking on the release of the figures in Pretoria today, Public Works Minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde, said, “during his State of the Nation address, President Jacob Zuma declared 2011 a year of jobs. It was within this context that my budget vote speech of 01 June 2011 focused on maximising the creation of work opportunities for a better live for all. Believing that working together we can mitigate the scourge of joblessness and poverty, I announced that for the financial year 2011/12 EPWP would be allocated R679 million for incentive grants to municipalities and R267 million for provinces.
Furthermore I have ordered the department to review the disbursement of the performance based incentive grants to both provincial and local governments, so that we can satisfy ourselves that such measures are cost effective and not open to abuse.”
According to the minister, as municipalities are at the coalface of service delivery, they require massive injection of relevant resources to ensure the fast-tracking of service delivery. In this regard, the Department of Public Works will be redeploying some of it’s skilled human resources from the EPWP to municipalities to strengthen EPWP by assisting with projects in those municipalities where the pace of delivery of infrastructure has been slow due to the shortage of such skills.
Minister Mahlangu-Nkabinde further emphasised that, “EPWP is a primary driver of job creation within the machinery of Government and I have expressed my confidence and conviction in the ability of the Department of Public Works to help combat joblessness and push back the frontiers of poverty within a short period of time. An assertion that is confirmed and reaffirmed by these newly released figures which reflect yet another positive delivery milestone of this successful programme.”
The active participation of the non-state sector entities remains important to maintaining the positive image of the EPWP. The participation of such entities, though significant, can and will be improved on to ensure that our partnership produces even more job opportunities for our people especially our youth.
The EPWP is a flagship programme of Public Works andin its endeavour to help create a better life for all our people and a better future for our youth, Public Works will ensure that all energy is focused towards ensuring that this program becomes an even better success going forward.
According to the EPWP Acting Deputy Director-General, Ignatius Ariyo, “the performance of the programme indicate that the EPWP is on target to meet the target of 4,5 million work opportunities by March 2014. The report also shows that the Non-State and Social sectors exceeded their targets. The focus is to ensure that the momentum achieved so far in EPWP phase two is not lost but increased.”
Mr Ariyo pointed out that the Infrastructure sector continued to contribute the largest number of work opportunities while the Social Sector, created jobs with a longer lifespan.
He also added that KwaZulu-Natal has the largest number of work opportunities created in total with the bulk of the jobs created in the Infrastructure Sector. KwaZulu-Natal is closely followed by the Eastern Cape and Gauteng Provinces.
However, the figures reflect that more work still needs to be done in the Free State, Northern Cape, North West and Mpumalanga interms of meeting their targets.
Mr Ariyo acknowledged that the EPWP will continue to engage with municipalities in the poor performing provinces to place EPWP at the nerve centre of job creation to fight poverty and unemployment. The department will also intensify technical support provided to Municipalities to ensure that projects are carried out labour-intensively to create work opportunities. The department will also ensure that municipalities’ access to the EPWP infrastructure sector incentive grant will act as an extra source of funds for creation of more EPWP projects.
Moving forward, the EPWP recognises the vital fact that for a developing country that is attempting to grapple with its high levels of structural unemployment and associated poverty, this public works programme will continue to be relevant to ensure that work can be created for the most disadvantaged in society. This is a necessary intervention of the government to address poverty, contribute to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and mitigate the structural impediments to job creation.
Enquiries:Mmuso Pelesa
EPWP: Media Liaison
Cell:082 957 3670
E-mail: mmuso.pelesa@dpw.gov.za
