The Congress of SA Trade Unions has launched a new project which would focus on making sure that the lives of the poor and workers were improved, the labour federation announced on Wednesday.

The project has been named Walking through the Open Doors. The decision to form this project was taken at Cosatu's Central Executive Committee in May.

According to the federation's general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, the project was to ensure that resolutions which were taken in the African National Congress' Polokwane conference in December were prioritised.

"If you look at our economy for the past 10 years, it benefited only the capitalists."

He said the economy had grown but the poor and the workers had not benefited.

"We have a huge crisis of about 35 to 40 percent of our people who are unemployed. We have a crisis of poverty and inequalities."

Vavi said South Africa was sitting on a ticking time bomb because issues affecting the majority had been ignored in the past 10 years.

He said the Walking through the Open Doors project was a strategy to ensure that Cosatu represented in a balanced manner in the country's political scene.

"We have to participate in the development of policies and programmes to drive economic transformation, and the labour market transformation."

Cosatu president Sdumo Dlamini quoted the Freedom Charter where it says, "the economy and the wealth shall be shared''.

The two said the project's aim was to ensure that the ANC' s election manifesto contained the key priorities, which were to deal with unemployment, poverty, crime, and improve the education and healthcare systems.

These were the resolutions of the Polokwane conference which must not be abandoned, said Vavi.

Walking through the Open Doors has a panel of economists, a retirement funds team, a labour markets team and an overall reference team for its phase one.

Its phase two deals with issues of politics and governance focus ---where the public sector, industrial policy and social protection issues would be dealt with.

Cosatu said it had placed a time frame of three to five years for the project to make a significant, measurable impact in the identified areas.