Hon
Speaker, our country's blueprint, the National Development Plan, states clearly that, in order to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality, South Africa has to raise levels of employment, and thereby ensuring that people earn incomes and sustain their livelihoods.
As one of our major public employment initiatives, the Expanded Public Works Programme, EPWP, is our flagship programme which contributes to the National Development Plan's core objective of achieving a decent standard of living for all South Africans by 2030.
This programme focuses on creating work opportunities that enhance the acquisition of skills across a range of trade
areas such as construction, plumbing, welding, painting, infrastructure maintenance - just to name a few.
In the process, those participating are paid stipends to sustain themselves and their families, thereby impacting and mitigating extreme poverty in our communities.
Central to the objectives of this programme is ensuring that, based on training and skills acquired during training, EPWP beneficiaries can now move into sustainable employment within the labour market. Alternatively, new pathways are created for these EPWP beneficiaries to engage in business venture creation, utilising training and skills acquired in the programme.
Experience from the implementation of this programme indicates that the programme has contributed towards the alleviation of poverty and provision of work experience to the participants. Since phase one of the programme, more than 10 million work opportunities have been created with over R64 billion paid in wages to participants.
Even though the Expanded Public Works Programme offers short- term employment, the income support it provides, in terms of wages to all those who are participating, makes a meaningful contribution towards reducing prevailing levels of poverty.
As it enters its fourth phase, the Expanded Public Works Programme will continue to draw its significant number of the unemployed South Africans, especially our young people, into productive work in a manner that will enable them to gain skills, increase their capacity to earn income, and contribute towards the betterment of our country.
However, to broaden the scale and impact, the increased participation of the private sector and other non-state actors will be critical in the implementation of EPWP phase four. Our experience suggests that, while government has invested in this programme over the past few years, private sector participation has been limited or nonexistent.
One of the major challenges facing the programme in provinces has to do with the placement of EPWP graduates after the end of their contracted periods. Some of the beneficiaries have had to go back home. As an unintended consequence, this has
created an expectation that government has to employ all these EPWP graduates. Such a position is fiscally untenable and unsustainable.
We need an approach that draws in a significant contribution from our private sector partners. Our close collaboration with the private sector will ensure that a placement plan is jointly agreed to, in order to ensure that opportunities are created by companies for the placement of some of the EPWP participants after graduating, depending on the skills they have acquired.
As part of increasing the intake of young people into public employment, government has already removed the requirement of experience as one of the criteria in the recruitment of new graduates.
Going forward, the work of the antipoverty inter-ministerial committee will integrate our Public Employment Programme with other antipoverty initiatives focusing on broad based participation in the productive sectors of our economy.
As we have highlighted in our earlier response, it is critical to prioritise the development of rural and township economies as part of boosting employment prospects in these poverty stricken areas.
Alongside public employment programmes, specific focus will continue to be put on enterprise and skills development initiatives to empower our unemployed young people to participate in all key sectors of our economy. Thank you, hon Speaker.