INPUT BY THE HEAD OF KWAZULU-NATAL DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT

DR. KWAZI MBANJWA

ON 19™ OCTOBER 2004

There are several distinct components within the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport's Expanded Public Works Programme which have been designed to specifically target vulnerable sectors of the rural community. These form part of our Road to Wealth and Job Creation Initiative which was first tabled at the Job Summit in October 1998. Our Expanded Public Works Programmes are all planned within the broader context of the development of a balanced road network, broad based black economic empowerment and the normalisation of the road construction industry in KwaZulu-Natal. Further, the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport is committed to channelling its budgets and consultation process through locally representative organisations (Rural Road Transport Forums, Community Road Safety Councils) which are accountable both to the Department and their constituent communities.

Perhaps our best known programme is Zibambele, which means "doing it for ourselves", which won the Impumelelo Innovations Award as the "most innovative programme focussed on the reduction of poverty and the improvement of the quality of life of the poor" and which was recently identified by President Mbeki in his Address to the National Council of Provinces as a clear example of best practice and a programme that should be rolled out throughout South Africa. Zibambele is a form of labour intensive road maintenance in which a household is contracted to maintain a specific length of road. The length of road allocated to each Zibambele household is determined by a maximum of 60 hours per month of work needed to maintain the road. This allows the Zibambele household to deploy labour on other economic fronts.

Zibambele focuses on women headed households with more than 95% of all contracts being awarded to them. A contract is awarded with equipment which includes a wheelbarrow, a pick, a shovel, a machete and a slasher.

Zibambele can best be described as a social development programme through which our rural road network is maintained. It is an emancipation programme because women who share in the maintenance of a road are assisted to organise collectively around their poverty and solutions to their poverty. Routine road maintenance provides ongoing work opportunities that are sustainable. The fact that the work is ongoing provides a fertile environment in which to introduce training programmes that are designed to assist poor people in acquiring the life skills and organisational capacity that are essential if they and their children are to have a better future. To this end Zibambele contractors have now been organised into savings clubs (440 clubs) to facilitate cost efficient supervision and training and to promote the investment of collective savings into viable wealth creating projects. It is anticipated that Zibambele savings clubs will become an important "point of contact" for other government departments and programmes that target gender and the poor. Here I am pleased to report that the KwaZulu- Natal Department of Transport and the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs are working together to introduce food security and market gardening programmes to Zibambele savings clubs.

Zibambele then is not only designed to stabilise poverty in the short term but to break poverty cycles in the medium to long term. The Zibambele programme has created sustainable work opportunities for the poorest of the poor and, at the same time, maintains public assets that are valued by rural communities. A recent independent social impact evaluation found that 96% of the respondents recorded that their lives had changed because of the Zibambele programme. The Zibambele programme had allowed many heads of households to put food on their tables and to meet other pressing needs such as schooling and health care. However, the evaluation found that there were clear benefits to contractors that could not be measured in monetary terms. These include that Zibambele contractors now feel skilled, respected and dignified. They feel in control of their futures despite the fact that they do not, for the most part, expect to earn an income outside of Zibambele.

Zibambele has put people to work who would normally be left out of any opportunity both because of their poverty and because of their gender. The Department has set a target of 40 000 Zibambele contracts. We have planned to achieve this target by 2009 and, this financial year, have budgeted for 24 000 Zibambele contracts.

The KwaZulu-Natai Department of Transport has also pioneered a staged advancement emerging contractor development programme called Vukuzakhe. Vukuzakhe, which means "rise up and build yourself", is our emerging contractor programme which is available to emerging contractors who are registered on our database. Vukuzakhe is based on a staged advancement programme in which each stage entails higher levels of risk to the contractor in business and plant management and the corresponding removal of support mechanisms by the Department. In Stage 1 contracts contractors are required only to provide small hand tools and labour. The Department supplies the Stage 1 contractor with plant and materials. As contractors advance through stages, so too does their responsibility to manage and supply all plant and materials. Contracts are awarded against set, negotiated or competitive rates. Other support services to emerging contractors include a relaxation of sureties and performance bonds, assistance in the supply of plant and materials, on the job training in both technical and business management skills and organisational development inputs to form associations, joint ventures and other forms of co-operative business enterprises.

While Vukuzahke is expected to address the structural constraints that restrict the growth, development and transformation of the construction industry in KwaZulu-Natal, it has a strong focus on labour intensive road construction methods that resonate with the objectives of the Expanded Public Works Programme. Currently more than 100 CETA learnerships have been awarded to Vukuzakhe contractors.

The growth of Vukuzakhe has been nothing less than phenomenal. Its budget allocation has grown from R27 million in the 1998/1999 financial to R410 million in the 2003/2004 financial year. Our records indicate that, over the past five years, Vukuzakhe contractors have themselves created more than 100 000 jobs. Over the past year we have piloted two new labour absorptive road construction programmes - with a current budget allocation of R25 million - under the umbrella of our Road to Wealth and Job Creation Initiative and the Expanded Public Works Programme.

The first initiative introduced a labour intensive "task based" methodology designed to provide some income relief to households living below the Minimum Living Level. In our task based labour intensive road construction programme, tasks and their remuneration are determined with beneficiary communities and take into consideration issues of under employment as well as unemployment. Task work is usually calculated according to what should be achieved within five to six hours of labour while labour is remunerated at R44 per task. Under this system it is possible to unbundle the construction of a one kilometre gravel road into some 3 400 tasks. Although our intension is to roll out the programme throughout KwaZulu-Natal, we have prioritised those municipal districts where 80% of households are recorded as living below the Minimum Living Level. Our second new initiative is a labour based road construction programme that will recruit, train and mentor youth. The objective of this programme is to provide unemployed youth with temporary but sustainable work opportunities and provide them with appropriate training to enhance their ability to earn a living in the future. What distinguishes our "youth development programme" from our "task based labour intensive programme" is that there is a focus on cost efficiency rather than on transfer payments to the poor. Our methodology focuses on the maximum use of labour within a framework of economic efficiency and competitiveness with alternative machine based methods. To this end we have been able to create 12 job opportunities for skilled workers (clerical and supervisory positions) and 194 job opportunities for unskilled workers for every 5 kilometres of road construction under this method.

This programme also provides the required experiential training for S3 Technikon students. Civil engineering and survey students studying for the National Diploma at South African Technikons are required to undergo a mandatory twelve months period of practical training at the end of their third year of study before they can proceed to their fourth and final year of study. The practical training component is to expose students to a working environment that will prepare them for the labour market. The number of S3 technicians who cannot find a suitable placing, and who therefore cannot complete their qualifications, is a growing characteristic of the unemployed youth in KwaZulu-Natal.

On average some 180 Technikon students in KwaZulu-Natal attain S3 level annually. We have targeted 42 placements of S3 students on our labour based construction programmes during the 2004/2005 financial year. We believe that this will assist in creating the necessary pool of expertise within the construction sector to achieve the objectives of the Expanded Public Works Programme. Finally, we have identified a wide range of local manufacturing opportunities that can be developed to supply some of our road construction material needs. The viability of local manufacturing enterprises is based on an import substitution model that calculates the competitiveness of supplies by taking into consideration reduced transport overheads in the costing of products. All viable local manufacturing supported by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport will be based on labour intensive production and, wherever possible, Zibambele savings clubs will be prioritised to become investors in rural manufacturing enterprises. By way of conclusion I would like to re-emphasise that all of our current labour absorptive programmes are based on our Road to Wealth and Job Creation Initiative which was first tabled at the Job Summit in October 1998. As such, over 30% of our budget allocations already comply with the requirements of the Expanded Public Works Programme.



Thank you.