Working+up+to+a+permanent+job,+Business+Day

Business Day, Johannesburg, 14 July 2005
=Working up to a permanent job=


 * Sean Phillips**

THE recently released Overcoming Underdevelopment in South Africa’s Second Economy report by the Development Bank of Southern Africa, Human Sciences Research Council and United Nations Development Programme includes a review of the expanded public works programme.

The report argues the programme has been incorrectly conceptualised because it is designed to create temporary, rather than sustained, employment.

However, the arguments in the report are based more on analysis of rhetoric about the programme than on a thorough review of the information about it, which would reveal that it has in fact been designed to train unemployed people for sustained employment or income wherever possible.

In the social sector of the expanded public works programme, government is focusing on training unemployed people for sustained employment in early childhood development and home community-based care.

In the economic sector, the focus is on developing and training emerging small businesses to become sustainable, competitive enterprises in the long term. And long-term work opportunities are being created where possible in the infrastructure and environmental sectors of the programme.

Some of the common criticisms of public works programmes internationally are that they are inefficient and unproductive and that they have high opportunity costs because they divert scarce resources away from other urgently needed services. SA’s expanded public works programme has been designed to avoid these pitfalls by focusing on using mainstream government expenditure on prioritised services in which there is potential for creating more work opportunities, coupled with training for lower-skilled people — either through expanding the service or through introducing more labour-intensive delivery methods. Because the programme involves mainstream budgets, public bodies have an incentive to implement labour-intensive projects to avoid a reduction in service outputs.

The design of the expanded public works programme is not based on the belief that the unemployment problem is cyclical rather than structural. The challenge for society is to find as many ways as possible to provide everyone who is willing and able to work with opportunities to work, to obtain at least a modicum of training, and to make a contribution to reconstruction and development — including through temporary work opportunities.

The programme is efficient and productive because it emphasises the cost-effective delivery of quality services as much as it emphasises the creation of work opportunities. For this reason, the programme puts great emphasis on developing the capacity of implementing agents (contractors, nongovernmental organisations) to manage labour-intensive work activities efficiently. More than 500 emerging contractors and more than 1000 of their supervisory staff are undergoing learnerships involving both classroom training and on-site training projects allocated by 31 provincial departments and municipalities.

The report also argues that the scale of chronic unemployment requires a more large-scale intervention. However, public works programmes will not solve unemployment on their own. Many initiatives are needed.

To date, the programme is on track to meet its initial five-year targets, with more than 200000 work opportunities having been created in the first year.

The aim is to accelerate implementation and to motivate for increased budgets for the expanded public works programmes that prove to be successful. The immediate challenge for government is to ensure that all departments put in place the capacity required to manage larger public works programmes.


 * Phillips is chief operations officer at the public works department.


 * From: http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/opinion.aspx?ID=BD4A68641