H Yawa: EPWP beneficiaries certificates awarding function

4 April 2006

Programme Director,
Head of the Department - Dr LK Sebego,
Management of the Department,
Members of the Regional Management Team,
Distinguished guests,
Members of the Media,
Ladies and gentlemen,

Since 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) led government has led the
way to provide an integrated, holistic approach to major social and economic
questions, including their provision of infrastructure. One of the major tasks
when we took government was to conduct a massive survey of infrastructure needs
in the face of obvious backlogs that we inherited.

The survey covered social and physical infrastructure, its state of
maintenance, and an assessment of future needs and addressed questions of
implementation agencies and the role of different spheres of action. We found
that there was an infrastructure backlog of about R170 billion in our country,
across all areas of activity.

In launching the Expanded Public Works Programme on 18 May 2004, President
Thabo Mbeki described it as “a comprehensive intergovernmental and
people-centred programme that seeks to fulfil the overwhelming trust and
confidence the masses of our people have placed in government that we should
work together, in partnership, to create a better life for all.”

Therefore, the programme is an important and far-reaching intervention that
seeks to address the causes and consequences of poverty by providing work
opportunities and skills to particularly those who are marginalised from the
mainstream of our economy.

An important element of the programme is a large-scale expansion of the use
of labour–intensive construction methods to build, upgrade and maintain the
social and economic infrastructure in all the underdeveloped rural and urban
areas of our country and province that do not have such infrastructure.

In implementing 207 Expanded Public Works Programme projects throughout the
province, 13 590 job and training opportunities were created. In the central
region we were able to create 3092 job and training opportunities through 34
EPWP projects.

The certificates awarded earlier to you bear testimony that the core
objectives of the programme were also realised. As government we invested more
than R600 000 in the training of 64 youth and 34 Women. The skills and
practical training that you acquired during the renovation of public
infrastructure in Lehurutshe, Ditsobotla, Montshioa and Mmabatho has increased
the pool of much needed skilled workers in the construction sector.

As a Department, we are convinced that to achieve Accelerated and Shared
Growth Initiative for South Africa’s (AsgiSA) goal of halving unemployment and
poverty by 2014, we will have to work more closely with you as women and youth.
Our vision as government is that by 2014 South Africa should have a
restructured and adaptive economy characterised by growth, employment and
equity, built on the full potentials of all persons, communities and geographic
areas.

As President Mbeki, said in his State of the Nation Address: we shall ensure
that the focus on youth development is intensified in all spheres of
government. I wish to congratulate all the beneficiaries for using time
creatively and for being part of a new Age of Hope. A new age of shared destiny
and shared growth.

I also wish to congratulate the Management Team of the Central Region,
recipients of the Best Performing Regions Awards for the 2005/06 financial
year, stakeholders involved in the projects and the training providers for the
progress that has been made in putting together a viable set of EPWP projects
and joining the provincial and national effort to create jobs and fight
poverty.

We are encouraged by the determination of the beneficiaries to succeed. Your
determination and partnership indeed makes a statement that all of us as
individuals and collectively can make a difference and should contribute to
give new content to our Age of Hope. Through your contribution and collective
effort we can make poverty history.

As we commemorate Solomon Mahlangu and Chris Hani on Thursday and next
Monday respectively, we salute the selfless sacrifices of these revolutionaries
and gallant fighters of our people. Their contribution made it possible for us
to be what we are today - a free people with an opportunity to truly
reconstruct our country in the interests of all its citizens. In their memory
we commit ourselves to work tirelessly to make poverty history.

Ke a leboga.

Issued by: Department of Public Works, North West Provincial
Government
4 April 2006
Source: North West Provincial Government (http://www.nwpg.gov.za/)