BCM bombs in providing work for unemployed – report on EPWP
Buffalo City Metro only managed to hire just over a quarter of the 8,664 unemployed people it said it would get jobs through the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) over the last financial year.
The percentage of disabled people in BCM finding work through the EPWP has also been dropping over the years, from 7% to 1% now.
This is according to a report compiled by SA Cities Network published on Thursday, which compared how each metro’s EPWP performed during the 2017-18 financial year.
The local government sphere pays the SA Cities Network to conduct research on its behalf.
BCM only created 2,307 EPWP jobs out of the promised 8,664.
The City of Cape Town did the best, reaching just under three quarters of the jobs target it set for itself.
The EPWP, which caters to the poor and unemployed, offers temporary jobs across the infrastructure, social, environment and culture sectors.
The programme pays work
ers a minimum of R88 per day. However, the actual wages paid varied from city to city.
In a breakdown, the report, entitled “The State of the Expanded Public Works Programme in SA Cities”, states BCM created 1,617 jobs in the infrastructure sector, 614 in environment and culture as well as 76 in the social sector, paying R35.5m in wages in 2017-18.
The programme seeks to create employment opportunities over longer periods, which is known in programme jargon as “full-time equivalents”.
In this category, BCM employed only 922 people.
The metro had promised to create 2,814 of these more sustainable jobs.
Cape Town employed 3,871 jobs with longer-term prospects out of a possible 8,390 and Johannesburg managed to create 3,482 out of 8,925.
When it came to rating metros on their overall EPWP performance, BCM was one of the worst, scoring only 16% compared to Cape Town (87%), Johannesburg (51%), eThekwini, (48%), Nelson Mandela Bay (46%) and Tshwane (29%).
Researchers noted the Duncan Village Revitalisation Programme as “novel and unique” – it is a way to target youths in and out of school.
In a ray of hope, the researches praised the fact that BCM youth made up 43% of the programme’s beneficiaries while 46% were women, up 14 percentage points from the 2013-14 financial year.
BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said in response to the publication: "We also take [the report] seriously.
“In fact, the reason we are members of this research-based organisation is that it gives us a learning and sharing platform where we can interact with our peer metros.”
The reason we are members is that it gives us a learning platform
Samkelo Ngwenya
Buffalo City Municipality spokesperson on SA Cities Network report