In mid-2009, just as it was becoming increasingly apparent that South Africa would not escape the fallout from the global economic crisis, newly elected President Jacob Zuma caused a stir when, in his State of the Nation address, he promised that government would create at least 500 000 job opportunities before the end of the year.

Observers were incredulous, noting the fact that South Africa had slipped into its first recession since 1992 and that jobs were being cut, not created. This incredulity grew when it emerged that the economy had shed some 500 000 jobs in the first half of the year, and was further embedded late last month when Statistics South Africa released a quarterly labour force survey showing that 484 000 jobs, including 283 000 formal-sector jobs, had been shed between July and September. In other words, the recession has already wiped out a cumulative 959 000 jobs, with embattled manufacturing industries having shed 194 000 of those.

The survey showed that unemployment, in the narrow definition of the term, had risen from 23,3% to about 24,5% over the past year, while, according to the broader definition of the term, which includes discouraged job seekers, unemployment had risen from 29,1% to 31,1% year-on-year, since last year.

As if that was not enough to blow the target, the National Treasury then also stated that the South African labour market was likely to remain weak over the medium term, owing to what is expected to be a slow recovery in the economy between 2010 and 2013.

In fact, in the 2009 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan admitted that creating jobs, particularly for millions of relatively unskilled South Africans, remained the country’s greatest economic challenge.

Only around 40% of the population aged between 15 and 64 were in some form of employment, comparing unfavourably with countries such as Brazil and China, where about two-thirds of the adult population were employed.

Public Works
Apart from a major structural change, the only feasible short-term remedy lies in government playing a greater role in drawing more South Africans into work that complements skills development and enhances service delivery.

This could primarily be done through the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), the first phase of which (spanning the years 2004 to 2009) exposes some 1,6-million people to work opportunities of varying duration, but mainly in infrastructure programmes.

Over the next five years, the new EPWP target has been set at 4,5-million short-term job opportunities, with Zuma’s 500 000-work-opportunity aspiration falling within that bigger plan.

To encourage government departments and municipalities to use funds in their baseline budgets for labour-intensive projects, a wage-based incentive mechanism is being implemented in the infrastructure sector, as well as for nongovernmental and community organisations providing services on behalf of government.

The incentive involves a reimbursement of R50 of the daily wage of each person hired, provided that the job target threshold has been exceeded. This subsidy will be extended to projects in the environment, cultural and social sectors. The threshold has been set for various public bodies’ performance and zero-rated for rural munici-palities, such as several in the Eastern Cape, a region hard-hit by unemployed miners returning home following cutbacks at mines.

Within the policy options currently available, government is looking to create opportunities in the areas of home-based care, refuse removal, building maintenance, grass cutting, rural road construction, securing government buildings (such as schools) and cleaning up environmentally sensitive areas, such as rivers, lakes and wetlands.

In addition, community works programmes, largely in rural areas, are being rolled out, with the aim of providing work for a minimum of 1 000 people a week, or 180 000 full-time-equivalent jobs by 2014. Gordhan adjusted the 2009/10 Budget by R114,5-million to cater for the scheme.

Just PR?
But with less than two months to go before the self-imposed cutoff date for the first 500 000 work opportunities, Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge, who has executive responsibility for the EPWP, is like the proverbial boy with his finger in the dyke. The difference between Doidge and that young Dutch boy, Hans Brinker, who helped prevent a flood, is that the former’s efforts might make little difference, even if the target is met. That is because the 500 000 jobs are not real jobs at all. Rather, they are short-term, non- renewable and unsustainable work opportunities.

“The ruling party’s promise to deliver 500 000 jobs is empty, because, even if they do meet the unlikely target, those jobs will have disappeared again in a few months or less,” the Democratic Alliance’s shadow Public Works Minister, James Masango, argues.

“I believe a long-term approach would have been a better move. It would have had fewer immediate results, but those results would have been longer lasting and more sustain-able. This attempt by the ANC to create jobs is nothing more than an expensive public relations exercise.”

Doidge is dancing to different tune, how-ever, stating in September, in Parliament, that government would not only reach the 500 000 new jobs target, but would actually exceed it. While only 83 900 new jobs had been recorded at that stage, Doidge was certain that that figure was underestimated.

The department says that updated figures will be released soon, but that a verification process is still under way to tally the work opportunities created since the first quarter.

“We are, however, confident that we are on track in meeting the targets set by the President,” Doidge tells Engineering News in response to questions, but adds that a monitoring system and support structures in the EPWP unit show that “the need exceeds the target”.

He says that concerns have been raised about local and provincial governments not reporting adequately and that early-warning systems will be put in place to alert the upper echelons if municipalities are lagging behind in their reporting.

Doidge has also signed implementation protocol agreements with all provinces, in terms of which the Premiers have committed their provincial executive committees to agree to their share of the EPWP targets and to report on monthly progress.

With the assistance of the Independent Development Trust, the department has appointed 90 data capturers, who have been deployed to various public bodies to assist with the backlog in the capturing of job opportunities.

The backlog itself is a result of the EPWP changing its reporting system to a Web-based system to improve the process of validating reported figures and reducing the turnaround time for the release of figures. But this change has had some teething problems of its own and the appointment of data capturers is an attempt to relieve the immediate reporting pressures on public bodies to allow them to focus on the creation of jobs.

Not Conceding Defeat
The Presidency’s chief economist for policy coordination and advisory services, Alan Hirsch, said in September that there were some programmes being introduced and others were being scaled up, “so I don’t think we should, at this point, concede defeat on achieving this target”.

In response to further Engineering News questions, Doidge notes that the EPWP is aimed at dealing with unacceptably high levels of structural unemployment. “The programme was, therefore, not a response to the global economic crisis,” he stresses, noting that the 500 000 target is part of a plan to accelerate the achievement of the target in the first nine months so as to counter the impact of increased job losses.

He also emphasises that the programme has always been about work opportunities and has been designed as a “social safety net to cover people during periods of unemployment and to provide work for those who have never had an opportunity to work”.

“It is common knowledge that government cannot provide jobs . . . [other than through] the expansion of the civil service,” Doidge adds. Instead, government is consciously intervening to deliver much-needed infrastructure and social services, and, at the same time, providing opportunities for the unemployed to earn an income through productive work.

Further, government is prioritising programmes that could provide regular, predictable and ongoing employment. “In the infrastructure sector, we are expanding on maintenance programmes that will provide ongoing employment,” Doidge explains, adding that the successful rural road maintenance Zibambele programme, in KwaZulu-Natal, is being extended to the Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga and will be rolled out to other provinces.

In the social and environment sectors, meanwhile, many of these programmes are ongoing in nature, as they are not as time-bound as infrastructure projects. “We are also accelerating the roll-out of the Community Works Programme, which is an innovative programme that involves local communities in deciding on the work that must be done and then selecting unemployed members of the community who will be guaranteed work for two days a week.”

By its very nature, though, the EPWP lives or dies on coordination and collaboration across all levels of government, which are difficult to control. “It is my job and that of all my Cabinet colleagues as well as provincial and municipal elected officials to ensure that all of government’s priorities and targets are achieved,” Doidge avers.

Target for Target’s Sake?
On the other hand, Masango believes that, while the target might be met, it will have little meaning, as, come 2010, the programme will have to be started all over again, and there will be no lasting effect on unemployment statistics in South Africa at all.

“They are just meeting a target for the sake of meeting a target,” he says.

Opposition parties have also flagged their concern that EPWP benefits flow only to those with political connections, and not the poor.

They have called for greater transparency about how and where the jobs are being, and will be, created.

Political economist Mohau Pheko has also question whether the EPWP will not be hit by the revenue shortfall, with Gordhan confirming in late October that the Budget balance would shift from the marginal deficit position of 1% in 2008/9 to an expected deficit of about 7,6% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2009/10, with State-owned enterprises and public-sector borrowing likely to reach 11,8% of GDP this year.

“A lot of people will lose their jobs, especially after the completion of the projects that are linked to the 2010 soccer World Cup, and this could give rise to service protests.

“We are already seeing the season of discontent and we expect it to get worse as we get closer to the 2011 local government elections,” Pheko was quoted as saying.

But with barely two months to go until government’s self-imposed jobs deadline, possibly the more worrying matter is that municipalities are lagging behind targets, not even knowing where the money for these new jobs should come from.

In fact, Doidge admitted as much at a recent gathering of the construction industry, which he addressed.

The Minister put the confusion down to the fact that the first quarter of the 2009/10 fiscal year “straddled an election period”.

Nevertheless, he remained convinced that the target remained intact and achievable, adding that he was setting up processes between his department and the National Treasury to ensure greater visibility of the funding pipeline. Also heartening is Doidge’s assessment that, should he fail to meet the jobs target, he “will most probably be redeployed”. – Reporting by Darren Parker and Terence Creamer.