The City of Johannesburg officially unveiled its Jozi @ Work Developmental Service Delivery Model in the Council Chamber on July 31, highlighting its plan to provide small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with developmental services to alleviate unemployment in the municipal area.

Johannesburg executive mayor Parks Mpho Tau says that beyond the service delivery challenges experienced in Johannesburg, the municipality needs to address developmental issues pertaining to employment.

“Youth unemployment continues to be a challenge in Johannesburg and is aggravated by the global economic meltdown. Massive job losses have a negative impact on the city’s residents and their ability to pay for services,” he emphasises.

The city, thus, needed to find innovative ways of creating jobs through SMEs, which would facilitate developmental growth.

In the 2014/15 financial year, starting this month, the municipality aims to invest R1-billion in funding development through SMEs, which would serve as Phase 1 of the Jozi @ Work project. During the second phase, scheduled to run in the 2015/16 financial year, the municipality plans to increase funding for the programme to R3-billion.

Moreover, the municipality highlights that, in supporting development through SMEs, the municipality will partner with communities to provide improved access to business development services that will ensure sustainable job creation.

Further, the municipality’s Jozi @ Work programme plan includes a procurement process, in partnership with communities, to ensure sustainable growth and investment in SMEs.

The procurement process includes six steps, which would be used to evaluate the legitimacy of SMEs in terms of the development strategy. These require SMEs to present a ringfenced spending budget plan and business proposals to the regional forums where they are based, which will be followed by an evaluation of the SME in terms of the procurement process by the regional steering committee.

Thereafter, a capability support agent will further assess the SME. An apprenticeship programme will then be conducted to ensure that the skills within the business are certified and the final decision on the SME will be made by a city-wide technical task team.

“The idea behind the partnership with communities is to form corporate enterprises and [enable communities to] assume responsibility for the implementation and maintenance management of SMEs that emerge from this project. In turn, this will build institutional capacity that will support these communities by [turning them into] incubator[s] for enterprise creation and development,” Tau points out.