GDID throws in the towel in terms of the administration of EPWP
16 March 2020
The Extended Public Works Program (EPWP) is a government programme designed to alleviate poverty and provide income relief through temporary work for the unemployed to carry out socially useful activities.
Gauteng’s Department of Infrastructure Development, which is responsible for the co-ordination of the programme across all government departments, has since its inception in Gauteng, provided the administrative services for the programme such as sourcing and on-boarding new applicants, monitoring attendance, payment of participants and skills development.
The poor quality of the administration of the programme has caused much unhappiness in terms of allegations of political patronage, nepotism, corruption, non- or inconsistent payment and participants exiting the programme without any marketable skills. Attempts to fix these problems have failed spectacularly because of poor management skills within the department.
Thus, it came a shock at a recent portfolio committee meeting when an announcement was made that the department would continue to co-ordinate the programme, but would give up the administration thereof. That responsibility is now passed on to each user department to administer the process within its own confines.
This poor decision is likely to cause chaos and is tantamount to spreading the ‘virus’ of weak management from one department across the whole administration. Instead of dealing decisively with the problems, Infrastructure Development has capitulated and the chaos experienced in the past will be evident everywhere.
In addition, it was announced that the Zivuseni poverty alleviation programme, a sub-program of EPWP, would be ditched by the Infrastructure department, ostensibly because of a lack of budget.
Walking away from the problem and passing it onto others is not only cowardly, but is a clear indication that the political leadership are amateurs and lack the experience required to make sensible decisions.
No wonder that everything government touches is destroyed.
Issued by Alan Fuchs,DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Infrastructure Development and Property Management, 16 March 2020
