Chairperson, hon Minister and Deputy Minister, hon members, whilst Cope holds the view that without a detailed plan, creating 500 000 jobs will remain a remote dream, we do however agree with President Zuma that the EPWP can be used to create job opportunities as a short-term intervention to alleviate poverty, especially in the most depressed areas of our country. The question we need to answer now is: How we can properly manage this programme in such a way that it can become key to creating the decent jobs that we all desire for our people?
Short-term jobs that will be counted as half a million in six months will not make the problem of joblessness in our communities go away. If anything, if there is no clarity beyond the short public relations drive of merely having job opportunities so they can be counted as four million in a few years, this will generate resentment amongst our people.
Talking about "properly managed", we do not believe there is yet a fully fledged plan of how this EPWP can feed into a sustainable model of job creation. We hope the Planning Commission in the Presidency will soon detail a plan that must clearly state how these interventions will create sustainable jobs in the medium and long term. We await such a plan with interest. There is also a need to maximise intergovernmental collaboration in the area of implementing such a plan. It can no longer be encouraged that local and provincial governments should have their own integrated development plans, not talking to a national plan to fight unemployment. One also hopes that all stakeholders will be consulted in making such a plan effective.
It is clear to all of us that job creation is not the job of government alone. Stakeholders such as business also need to come up with a plan on how they will support government to ensure that collectively we tackle this mammoth challenge.
Our people have become cynical of government programmes that end up benefiting only those connected to the ruling party. If these programmes are to be respected, corruption must be rooted out of them. The inefficiency that results in money being returned to the Treasury, one hopes, will from now on be a punishable offence in government.
One of the crucial aspects of this intervention that speaks directly to the issue of sustainability is proper training. Role-players that are knowledgeable in this regard need to be engaged to make sure that the course content is relevant to the objective of the programme. Will the beneficiaries - I'm referring to ordinary workers who are trained during the implementation of the project - use the acquired skills in future? When referring to learners, such as learner contractors and learner supervisors, the plan must become stricter because these are the possible future employers.
It is important that life skills training also becomes an integral part of this intervention to make sure that the beneficiaries can have a better opportunity to fit into industries other than that of the immediate programme.
Madam Chairperson, the concern about consultation across government lines is as a result of our own experiences on the ground where ward councillors stall implementation of well-intended programmes by national government because they feel undermined in their own area of representation of the people. Without involving these structures of local government properly, you cannot expect our people to embrace these interventions. Conflict between spheres of government must be avoided at all costs, as the victims become the intended beneficiaries. Our people have been waiting for years for promised jobs.
Chairperson, Cope shall support the plan. It is important that the plan must tell us how infighting will not affect the programme. The infighting of the ruling party in some municipalities has affected the EPWP considerably, to such an extent that learners and beneficiaries have lost faith in the programme.
The detailed plan is very important, because it must say when the programme is in a municipality, and that municipality does not have implementation capacity, what shall be done. When roll-overs happen every year, what interventions will the department have? Cope supports the Budget Vote. I thank you.