Pretoria – More than three million work opportunities have been created nine months before the second phase of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) comes to an end.
EPWP Deputy Director-General, Stanley Henderson, on Wednesday said the target for the second phase, which is from the 2009/10 financial year until March 2014, was to create 4.5 million work opportunities for unemployed South Africans.
“Since the implementation of the EPWP phase 2 in 2009, the programme has made a significant impact within our South African communities, through the different programmes, in the upliftment of the socio-economic conditions of the unemployed.
“By the end of the 2012/13 financial year, 3.1 million work opportunities have been created since the start of the second phase,” he said.
Henderson said this achievement positioned the programme as one of the key catalysts in government’s job creation drive.
He also said the incentive grant model was revised by the Public Works Department to give rural municipalities easier access to grants, in order to increase labour intensive work opportunities through the EPWP projects.
The revised model was implemented in the 2012/13 financial year.
“The programme easily reached its target for women and youth participating in the programme, with 60 percent of the participants being women and 50 percent being youth, compared to the targets of 55 percent women and 40 percent youth,” he said.
More municipalities are implementing EPWP, with 277 out of 278 municipalities having already signed protocol agreements committing themselves to achieve their EPWP targets.
Henderson also announced that the department was currently in the process of finalising a business plan for phase 3, adding that the proposal will be submitted to Cabinet Lekgotla for endorsement this month.
The department also unveiled the EPWP website, which they will use to promote the programme, make it accessible and transparent to beneficiaries and all the relevant stakeholders.
The EPWP was introduced in 2004 with a clear mandate of alleviating poverty and unemployment through the provision of training and work opportunities to the poor and unemployed South Africans.
It is implemented by all three spheres of government across its four sectors which are infrastructure, non-state, and environment and culture as well as social sectors. - SAnews.gov.za
