The government’s women empowerment drive bore fruit on Monday when Public Works Minister Stella Sigcau paid an inspection visit to Johannesburg’s Leeuwkop Prison where a R19-million revamp project by a black woman contractor has just been completed.
The project by Stephina Lindiwe Moloko of LS Construction is one of more than 75 projects amounting about R188-million which the Public Works department has awarded to women-owned enterprises as part of its strategy to develop emerging contractors, particularly women.
Moloko completed the first of the two-phased maintenance project at the prison on March 13 and is expected to finalise it at the end of March next year. Moloko is one the women making up 10% of the country’s 3 257 registered emerging contractors in the male dominated R37-billion per year industry.
Sigcau said although the construction industry was the cornerstone of the Reconstruction and Development Programme in terms of infrastructure delivery and social development, it remained skewed against meaningful participation by women.
”Women empowerment initiatives should be understood within the overall departmental drive to promote the growth, development and transformation of the construction industry and throw it open to the previously excluded groups, including blacks, women and youth,” she said.
As part of its core functions, Sigcau’s department provides maintenance and fixed property management services to other departments such as Correctional Services.
She said the project under which the Leeuwkop contract was awarded was the brainchild of her department to proactively halt the decay brought by the maintenance backlog in government-owned fixed properties. All 179 prisons in the country are maintained by Public Works. – Sapa