Barry Streek
The government has released details of its R374-million Community Based Public Works Programme (CBPWP) for the current financial year, including a R50-million programme to involve unemployed young people in making government buildings accessible to disabled people.
It has also allocated R6-million for repairs to roads and bridges damaged by the floods earlier this year in Northern Province, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal.
Other projects include the erection of three “community production centres” to rehabilitate rural irrigation centres and provide agricultural support, at a cost of R22,5-million, and four “multi-purpose centres”, involving the clustering of projects and incorporating a number of villages, at a cost of R15-million.
Details of this year’s allocations for the CBPWP were released in Parliament last week, when the Minister of Public Works Stella Sigcau presented her budget.
Sigcau said the CBPWP is located squarely within the government’s integrated rural development programme and it focuses on “poverty alleviation, employment creation and provision of community infrastructure for rural people”.
The programme had produced 944 assets in the past three financial years and, despite the delays caused by the floods, particularly in the Northern Province, Sigcau’s department had completed 227 projects of 348 that were identified and budgeted in the 1998/1999 financial year.
“A total of 23 806 jobs were created, of which 2 196 are sustainable, in the targeted provinces of Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Northern Province. It is also heartening that there was a social impact: 40% women, 38% youth and 1% disabled people were employed during this period,” said Sigcau.
The construction of community production and multi-purpose centres is the new focus of the programme.
The pilot community production centres are being established at Lambasi in the Eastern Cape, Makhathini Flats in KwaZulu-Natal and Veeplaas in Northern Province, targeting between 56 000 and 200 000 beneficiaries, while the multi- purpose centres are being erected at Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal, Lusisiki and Willowvale in the Eastern Cape, and Bushbuckridge in the Northern Province.
“The Community Based Public Works Programme is a direct attack on poverty,” said Sigcau.
Most of the budget is going to the Eastern Cape (R115,9-million), KwaZulu- Natal (R91,9-million), and the Northern Province (R82,5-million), but a further R9-million has been allocated to Mpumalanga, R1,6-million to Gauteng, R6,4- million to the Free State, R6,4-million to North-West, R1,6-million to the Western Cape, and R58,7-million to national projects.
The Department of Public Works’s initiative in the rural areas is clearly substantial, even if evaluation of its effect on poverty is not easy.