Remarks by GOOD MP Shaun August on his presentation to the Portfolio Committee of Public Works and Infrastructure today on GOOD’s petition on the Expanded Public Works Programme.
16 March 2021
Honourable members…
In our country of radical inequality, unemployment and poverty, the State provides critically important safety nets to the elderly, disabled and children in the form of social grants.
Imagine for a moment that in order to qualify for these grants citizens had to belong to a certain political party, or be somehow related to a serving public representative. It is totally unthinkable, besides unconstitutional.
Yet that is exactly the way another of the State’s frontline poverty alleviation programmes, the Expanded Public Works Programme, is being manipulated across the country.
The programme has been re-tooled to enable politicians to reward loyal members, supporters, friends and family members. To the exclusion of everyone else.
Vote for us, or starve, they are effectively telling vulnerable citizens – more than 32% of whom are unemployed according to recent StatsSA numbers.
Honourable members…
We saw, in by-elections last year, how political parties unashamedly targeted the people most desperate for income in their communities with offers of temporary jobs in return for their votes.
The GOOD Party resolved to launch its national petition for fairness, equality and integrity in the EPWP after receiving similar complaints from communities across the country.
The EPWP provides paid short to medium term work (euphemistically called “job opportunities”) to individuals on EPWP-designated projects within the framework of the EPWP Code of Good Practice read together with Ministerial Determination Four of May 2012 in terms of Section 50 of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act.
Typically, beneficiaries of the programme are absorbed into the infrastructure, environment, culture and social sectors.
GOOD’s petition requested the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure, together with this portfolio committee, to consider a policy review aimed at ensuring compliance by all municipal, provincial and national government departments with the principles of fair and impartial allocations of EPWP opportunities.
The policy review must specifically close down the possibilities for cadre deployment and the manipulation of opportunities by public representatives and political parties.
The EPWP must be primarily re-positioned as a poverty alleviation tool, not camouflaged as job creation. At the same time, it must seek to develop the skills and employability of participants, particularly the youth.
It must provide equal opportunities to all members in the ranks of the unemployed with a review of the current living/minimum wage within the program, how money is transferred to agencies like the IDT and if it is performance based.
Chairperson…
We received tens of thousands of signatures from good people across the country – not all of them GOOD members and supporters.
We submitted the petition to the Speakers Office on 24 November 2020.
Our appeal is for government to walk the talk on the EPWP.
Each day we, as public representatives, sit back and allow the manipulation of the programme by political parties and officials – thus enabling it – we spit in the faces of the poor.
When the EPWP program was initially adopted by the National Department of Public Works, it was launched under the theme: More jobs, better jobs and decent work for all.
What we actually have is a contradiction of our Constitution and Employment Equity Act.
It is time to re-evaluate what the programme has achieved and how it may better contribute to loosening the grip of poverty and unemployment that is presently choking millions of our compatriots.
With an election on the horizon, traditionally a period of heightened EPWP manipulation in the scramble for votes, GOOD appeals to the committee is to tackle this matter with speed.
It shouldn’t matter which party we represent; we have responsibilities as elected public representatives, to re-establish the EPWP’s integrity.
ENDS