Jobs plan needs synergy to support youth
The quarterly report of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) showed the difficulty of undertaking public works or mass social employment, as expected by the Economic Recovery and Reconstruction Programme (ERRP), in the context of lockdowns and restrictions in mobility.
Labour demand patterns will not respond to underemployment, particularly of those with limited or no skills, and many of those not in employment, education or training, even in a context of growing labour market demand and economic growth.
Moreover, what the coronavirus era has shown is that our public employment response is overwhelmingly reliant on human interaction and mobility. Ecological, epidemiological and other crises may require evacuations, lockdowns, quarantines and other restrictions of different forms in response. Put differently, can our public employment programme envisage remote work and training, recognised and remunerated as such? Maybe not now, but if our recovery plans are anything to go by they may have to.
The ERRP anticipates, correctly, that the Covid crisis will make unemployment worse, especially for young people. In the Eastern Cape, for instance, we know there were fewer people in employment in the fourth quarter of 2020 than in the first quarter of 2008. During that period the workingage population in the province grew by 571,000, according to Stats SA. In such a context, the ERRP makes provision for a mass public employment plan that builds on the existing EPWP programmes and the implementation of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention.
Yet in a context where so much expectation is placed on the programme, there is a need to ask difficult questions about who its beneficiaries are, what activities are undertaken and what the “exit strategy” is meant to be. Moreover, how do these elements link up to our unemployment challenge, the uncertainty of the moment and the need for those who seek work to find work?
At a programmatic level, the mainstay of the EPWP — the infrastructure and social sectors, where most projects and work opportunities are — have largely involved workseekers beyond the age of 35. The business plan of the fourth phase of the EPWP sets a target of 55% youth participation across the programme. Yet only the Western Cape, Northern Cape and Gauteng reached their phase-four demographic targets of ensuring that of all EPWP participants 55% are youths.
In provinces such as the Eastern Cape and KwaZuluNatal less than 40% of participants were youths.
Two related questions emerge. What community-built assets and developed capabilities matter, and how do we equip participants to provide these while improving their future and current prospects? One cannot avoid that every hour spent in work — repairing and maintaining access roads, clearing alien vegetation or fixing water leaks — involves the acquisition of skill. The question is, how do we recognise, certify and signal such knowledge and experience? This is where the sector education & training authority and post-school education and training sector needs to come to the party.
Brief answers to these difficult questions may emerge from the design of different programmes within each EPWP sector. For instance, many of the infrastructure programmes have focused on needed sanitation, transport and other infrastructure, and may require linkages with the expansion of digital infrastructure and new transmission and generation infrastructure in the energy sector. Beyond these, as the Jobs Summit observed, is a need for activities focused on installation, maintenance and repair in artisanal trades linked to the day-to-day needs of our municipal areas.
Lastly, there is a need for not only better codesign of activities but also an interface with other private sector initiatives looking to get young people who are in long-term unemployment, the discouraged and the economically inactive, busy.
Therefore, the call to establish a social employment fund to underwrite communityfocused work is something that must be encouraged, with clear financing mechanisms to ensure ongoing work rather than work that contributes to the zigzag transitions many experience in the SA labour market.