the Achievements of Collaborate Government celebration, Setsoto,
Ficksburg
11 February 2006
The MEC for Public Works in the Free State
The MEC for Local Government
Members of Parliament
Ladies and gentlemen
It is an honour that I have been given the opportunity to address this
occasion today where we celebrate the achievements of collaborative government.
I will take todayâs occasion to give you not a history lesson but to give you a
perspective that will illustrate how far we have come but also where we are
going.
This will hopefully indicate to you what role, however minor, the Department
of Public Works has played in attempts to deal with the twin challenges of
poverty alleviation and the creation of jobs. Since have since 1994 constructed
over 4000 facilities in seven of the nine provinces and created 163 000 job
opportunities in the process. These ranged from access roads, taxi ranks,
classrooms, community halls and production facilities among others, structures
by means of which we aimed at alleviation poverty among our people.
Apart from Gauteng and Western Cape all the provinces benefited from the
Community Based Public Works Programme (CBPWP), including the Free State, where
we are today. In 2004, government decided that the CBPWP had played its role,
but that its impact and reach had to be extended if it was to have greater and
long term effect in the fight against poverty and job creation. The expansion
process, which necessitated the inclusion of the environment, social and
economic sectors in addition to the infrastructure sector has seen the best
practice of the CBPWP being incorporated into the Expanded Public Works
Programme (EPWP).
It has been more than a year since President Thabo Mbeki launched the EPWP
in Limpopo on May 18 2004. Since then, the EPWP has released the first yearâs
report on its operations, including the challenges such as those of
co-ordination that it faced at the beginning and the job opportunities created.
Over the past year, we have defined the role of the Department of Public Works
as that of monitoring the implementation of the EPWP. In this regard we have
collected reports from the other sector co-ordinating departments and produced
combined progress reports. Department of Public Works has also been responsible
for co-ordinating the infrastructure sector and supporting the provinces and
municipalities with the implementation of the EPWP. The role of Department of
Public Works has in addition been to generally create an enabling environment
for the EPWP. Together with the Business Trust we established the EPWP Support
Programme, providing strategic support to the co-ordinating departments as well
as hands on support to a selected provinces and municipalities.
We are pleased that as a result of this intervention and co-ordination, we
have started the Vukâuphile learnership programme which we take part in
together with the Construction Education and Training Authority (CETA). It aims
to build capacity among local emerging contractors to participate effectively
in the EPWP. To date more than 39 public bodies are participating in this
programme. As a result of this tight co-ordination, monitoring and evaluation,
we are now happy that we have created more than 220 000 gross job
opportunities. In the first quarter of 2005, we created more than 60 000 jobs.
The number of network opportunities created is estimated by subtracting the
number of work opportunities that would have been created if projects had been
executed in a machine-intensive manner from the total number of work
opportunities reported.
This estimate is only done on infrastructure projects. These figures also
exclude contributions from the municipalities as no detailed report (i.e.
including project-level details) on the municipal projects has been received
yet. Because of these positive spin offs, Cabinet decided last July that the
EPWP needed to be up scaled, in other words its scale be increased, in order to
intensify its positive economic impact. Last week, Deputy President Phumzile
Mlambo Ngcuka announced that an additional R4.5 billion would be allocated to
the EPWP for the purposes of scaling it up. Just because of this increase, we
will be able to put about 63 000 more people maintaining roads and about 100
000 additional people in jobs averaging six months in roads building.
In addition, 1000 more small black contractors will be developed. These jobs
are in addition to the 220 000 we created in the first year of operation and 60
000 in the first quarter of the first year. In the economic sector of the
programme Department of Public Works and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)
are currently working closely with nine different SETAs to implement
learnerships that will support small businesses which supply goods and services
to government. The first quarter sector break-down of the number of work
opportunities show that most work opportunities were created in the
Infrastructure Sector. This is why we have concentrated on this sector for a
start, as it carries the greatest potential for growth. We have however also
identified the following areas as being necessary for the successful
implementation of this phase of the EPWP.
As you are well aware, the EPWP is a transversal programme, involving a
number of departments across sector and spheres. If these binding constraints,
among others, are dealt with, I believe that we would be well on our way
towards achieving the goals we have set ourselves in the EPWP, as a small part
of the overall Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa
(ASGISA).
These are:
* A high level commitment at various spheres, particularly interdepartmental
co-ordination
* That provinces are to have dedicated capacity and budgets in-order to make
meaningful contribution
* Proper systems which will facilitate the flow of information (data
collection, processing, reporting)
* Inclusion of Environment and Culture Sector programmes in the Metros and
Municipalities.
* The specific challenges for training and skills development are the
following:
* Few accredited service providers in environment and culture sector.
* Distribution across provinces of such providers.
* Availability of courses required by the sector.
If we unlocked the above challenges in the EPWP, I am sure we will play an
even better role than we have been playing to date. This will lead to a
qualitative contribution to ASGISA whose aims are not different from that of
CBPWP and the EPWP. ASGISA aims to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014. It
builds on micro-economic reforms and agreements reached at Growth and
Development Summit and takes advantage of a stable macro-economic environment
and an economy that has been growing at 4% plus in the past two years.
It seeks to bridge the gap between the First and Second Economy. This is
because we have determined over the past decade that those who live in the
Second Economy are not in themselves able to move en masse into the First
Economy. In other words, there are structural constraints standing in the way
of the natural growth of the First Economy. Put another way, we would wait
forever if we did not intervene to aid those in the Second Economy
economically.
The Deputy President has indicated that the high business confidence offers
an opportunity to create a healthy and a growing private sector in the First
Economy, which can address the challenges of the Second Economy. Government has
said that the public infrastructure and private investment programmes, require
skills â including professional skills such as engineers and scientists,
managers and financial personnel, project managers; and skilled technical
employees such as information technology (IT) specialists and artisans.
ASGISA says that one of the key measures to address the skills challenge in
the educational sphere will be to focus on quality education and adult basic
education and training (ABET) among others including artesenal skills. A new
institution will be established in March called the Joint Initiative for
Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA). It will be led by a committee of
Ministers, business leaders, trade unionists and education and training
providers or experts.
These, ladies and gentlemen, are some of the issues which make it difficult
for optimism to prevail. In conclusion the next battle in the country will be
over how to grow the first economy at a rapid rate while at the same time
increasing the impact in the second economy. That will call on a skills
development and acquisition drive never seen since the discovery of diamonds
and gold called for special mining skills. This is the grease that will oil the
engine that is South Africa and safeguard this democratic order in time to
come. I thank you.
Issued by: Ministry of Public Works
11 February 2006
Source: Department of Public Works (http://www.publicworks.gov.za/)
