Date: 25/06/2003
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government
Title: Shilowa: Launch of Gauteng's maximisation of labour intensity programme
ADDRESS BY PREMIER MBHAZIMA SHILOWA, AT THE LAUNCH OF GAUTENG'S MAXIMISATION OF LABOUR INTENSITY PROGRAMME, Sandton Convention Centre, 25 June 2003
Programme Director;
MEC Mosunkutu;
Members of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature;
Mayors and other representatives of local government;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen
Tomorrow marks the 48th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People. As we gather here today, we need to ask ourselves the question: What are we doing to uplift the quality of all our people - thereby helping bring to fruition their demands as enshrined in the Freedom Charter?
While we can boldly say that the clarion call that 'the people shall govern' has been realised with the adoption of our democratic constitution and the participation by all South Africans in local, provincial and national elections, more still needs to be done to ensure that democracy means more than the right to vote every couple of years.
Based on the work done since 1994, we can boldly say that we have made huge progress towards the realisation of the people's demands in the Freedom Charter.
We continue to make great progress towards our historic goal- a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.
While we inherited a county with millions of people living in poverty and unemployment, through determination and careful planning we have taken concrete steps to improve the lives of our people.
From the outset we were well aware that the march to a better South Africa would not be an easy one, given the severity of the problems created by centuries of colonialism and apartheid. Armed with our people's basic document, the Freedom Charter, and plan for social transformation, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, we knew that it was possible, working together with communities, to march on a new South Africa whose citizens would enjoy a better quality of life.
Despite the challenges and difficulties of the initial stages of our march to a better South Africa, we remained unflinching in our resolve to intensify the offensive for transformation and development.
Today we can see the results of our hard work. Many more South Africans now enjoy a better quality of life than they did years ago.
These changes notwithstanding, our country is still characterised by vast racial and gender inequalities in respect of access to productive assets, wealth and income them.
We remain committed to stimulate a higher economic growth rate and create jobs and build sustainable communities.
Our experience in the past nine years has confirmed the importance of building a strong partnership between government and the people in pursuit of our goal of building a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society.
The recently held, successful Growth and Development Summit provides new possibilities for us to make further advances in solving the problem of the high unemployment rate. The resolution of the Summit confirmed the correctness of our long-held approach of using labour-intensive public works programmes to enhance short-term job creation.
All parties to the Summit agreed to an expansion in public investment initiatives and said "many of these initiatives will be mainstream infrastructure projects with a very strong construction and labour-based component."
The parties also agreed to:
* Address bottlenecks in infrastructure planning and project management for infrastructure development and maintenance;
* Strengthen the design and terms of public-private partnerships, public-community partnerships and construction contracts,
* Promote labour-based construction methods and to identify the types of projects where a deliberate choice in favour of labour-based methods is feasible.
Business also committed itself to "mobilise and make available its skills and expertise. With a view to enhancing the proper project design and management of these projects.
The Gauteng Provincial Government has been exploring the use of labour intensive methods for many years.
Within the Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works a number of programmes in this regard have been set up, including:
* LABMAX, which identifies certain projects with a high, labour absorbing capacity and ensure that it is done in a labour intensive way. Presently about 36% of the provincial government infrastructure budget is spent in this way.
* Community Based Public Works Projects, which focus on labour intensive projects in partnership with other spheres of government, the private sector and non-governmental sector.
* Zivuseni, which focuses on the maintenance of public buildings using labour intensive techniques.
The provincial government has now taken a great leap forward in fulfilling the promise we made at he beginning of our term of office that all our infrastructure projects would promote job creation through the maximisation of the use of labour. We have adopted a strategy to promote labour intensity, which outlines how, working together with the private sector, we will maximise the labour content of our CAPEX project.
Henceforth, all infrastructure projects undertaken by government in Gauteng will be planned taking into account prescribed targets. This requires a paradigm shift by the public and private sector in planning, design, tender specifications and delivery.
Firstly, the planning for these projects will need to identify appropriate targets and performance indicators in respect of labour intensity. Secondly, these projects will need to be designed in a way to meet these targets. Thirdly, the Department of Public Works will monitor these targets and designs as well as provide support to ensure that the targets can be met.
ALL projects will need to spell out their labour content and the number of jobs that are planned to be created in terms of standard definitions provided by the Department of Public Works.
To ensure that implementation of the strategy, the Department of Public Works will ensure the revision of the current procurement framework and the development of pro forma instruments such as new specifications and standard for bills of quantities.
Drawing on a number of studies we are in a position to increase the number of people employed in projects such as road construction and the building of houses and public amenities while maintaining quality and timeframes for delivery. Our aim to maximise the number of jobs created through the appropriate mix of people and equipment.
This is a province-wide programme that involves all the infrastructure development departments in Gauteng. These are: Housing, Development Planning and Local Government, Department of Education, Health, Public Transport, Roads and Works. We also intend to work closely with local and national government.
By spending a sizeable portion of our R5 billion CAPEX in this way, we will make a significant impact on employment creation of poverty.
We are here today to seek your support on new ways to maximize our labour intensive strategy to meet our goal of growing the economy and creating jobs. We call on the private sector and institutions of higher learning to embrace this approach in both public and private projects. Only in this way will the commitment of government and social partners made at the recent Growth and Development Summit, to halve unemployment by 2014, be realised.
Our commitment to the use of public resources to create temporary jobs was once more highlighted with the successful launch of the Zivuseni poverty alleviation projects last year. The extent of poverty and the timeliness of the intervention of the projects are evidenced by the overwhelming response by thousands of potential beneficiaries who enrolled with the project at a number of identified centres throughout the province.
The participants in the Zivuseni programme benefit not only through the income gained from short-term jobs also through skills acquired in the process.
We intend to accelerate the implementation of all our other public works programmes that are aimed at alleviating poverty through short-term job creation.
During the current financial year, R150 million has been set aside to create jobs for 25000 unemployed people, 50% of whom will be women, 25% youth and 1 to 3% people with disabilities.
The two greatest challenges currently are stakeholder attitude and capacity. Attitude in that people either thinks that it is not possible to do o they do not want to do labour intensive construction. Those who want to do it do not have the capacity to do so due to lack of labour intensive construction skills and management capability. This because our training has been for a long time, geared towards conventional methods of construction.
But the Gauteng Government says it can be done and has been done nationally and internationally. What we need is the resolve of all stakeholders to make it happen. We all need to work together to make this a success.
This places certain challenges to the various stakeholders. To construction companies, the shift entails, among others, sourcing of alternative technologies. To tertiary institutions this entails working out and incorporating appropriate curricula whilst to our communities this calls on their vigilance to monitor that contracted construction companies utilise labour intensive methods. To the private sector, this entails, among others, moral support.
The move towards the maximisation of the use of labour intensity is only one pillar of our job creation strategy. Other pillars include our Blue IQ projects which aim to create enabling economic infrastructure to spur investment and economic growth. This should result in the development of long-term sustainable jobs.
While we continue to make good progress in growing the economy the challenge of employment creation remains a pressing one. Another challenge is creating opportunities for black people especially women to participate in the economy as entrepreneurs and owners of wealth.
To respond to these challenges and ensure alignment with the national manufacturing strategy, we embarked last year on a review of our industrial strategy. The new revised strategy which was launched last night focuses on broadening participation in economic activities amongst various business and industrial sectors.
The strategy strives towards the extension of economic benefits to all the people of Gauteng, and identifies pillars designed to progressively address unemployment, poverty and high disparities in income levels are to address the goals of economic participation and extension of economic benefit.
A growth-focus pillar identifies the economic strengths of Gauteng's economy with strategic approaches to harness these, serving as an economic locomotive for the province and the county. The other pillar is a socio-economic pillar, through which strategies are adopted to ensure that economic growth and progress address socio-economic needs in the province.
The three strategic thrusts adopted for the 1997 strategy will be retained and deepened. These thrusts which still forms part of the revised strategy include a move away from traditional, heavy industry input markets towards more sophisticated, high value added manufacturing Gauteng's development as the smart centre of the country; and the development of the finance business service and business tourism sectors.
The two new thrusts cover employment generation and the encouragement of business activity amongst people who do not have existing wealth, assets and skills. This implies a focus on newer, smaller enterprises, rather than on expansions by existing large companies.
Within the framework stipulated by national government, we will provide extensions to the BEE policy and regulatory framework and to support BEE companies through affirmative procurement.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are an important vehicles for economic growth and for addressing the issue of unemployment. In this regard, the province will focus on empowering the youth and women.
We remain on track as a major procurer of goods and services, to ensure that wherever possible our providers are SMEs and from previously disadvantaged communities. More than 50% of contracts to build roads and public building go to previously disadvantaged individuals. During the financial year, 70% of our contracts for the maintenance of our building will go to black contracts.
In our efforts to improve opportunities for SMEs, we have identified that erratic and long delays in payments have made it difficult for small businesses to provide services for government. Through the centralisation of procurement at the GSSC we have managed to reduce such payments times to 30 days on new cases and are striving for even greater efficiencies.
I hereby call on all present to join us on a programme to:
* Stimulate a higher economic growth rate and create job to help millions of our unemployed;
* Create sustainable communities by developing new integrated housing projects and regenerating some of our old places;
* Create short-term employment to help the poorest of the poor;
* Further improve the quality of education to help develop human resources to meet the needs of the new economy.
Issued by Gauteng Provincial Government
25 June 2003
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government
Title: Shilowa: Launch of Gauteng's maximisation of labour intensity programme
ADDRESS BY PREMIER MBHAZIMA SHILOWA, AT THE LAUNCH OF GAUTENG'S MAXIMISATION OF LABOUR INTENSITY PROGRAMME, Sandton Convention Centre, 25 June 2003
Programme Director;
MEC Mosunkutu;
Members of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature;
Mayors and other representatives of local government;
Distinguished guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen
Tomorrow marks the 48th anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter by the Congress of the People. As we gather here today, we need to ask ourselves the question: What are we doing to uplift the quality of all our people - thereby helping bring to fruition their demands as enshrined in the Freedom Charter?
While we can boldly say that the clarion call that 'the people shall govern' has been realised with the adoption of our democratic constitution and the participation by all South Africans in local, provincial and national elections, more still needs to be done to ensure that democracy means more than the right to vote every couple of years.
Based on the work done since 1994, we can boldly say that we have made huge progress towards the realisation of the people's demands in the Freedom Charter.
We continue to make great progress towards our historic goal- a united, non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous South Africa.
While we inherited a county with millions of people living in poverty and unemployment, through determination and careful planning we have taken concrete steps to improve the lives of our people.
From the outset we were well aware that the march to a better South Africa would not be an easy one, given the severity of the problems created by centuries of colonialism and apartheid. Armed with our people's basic document, the Freedom Charter, and plan for social transformation, the Reconstruction and Development Programme, we knew that it was possible, working together with communities, to march on a new South Africa whose citizens would enjoy a better quality of life.
Despite the challenges and difficulties of the initial stages of our march to a better South Africa, we remained unflinching in our resolve to intensify the offensive for transformation and development.
Today we can see the results of our hard work. Many more South Africans now enjoy a better quality of life than they did years ago.
These changes notwithstanding, our country is still characterised by vast racial and gender inequalities in respect of access to productive assets, wealth and income them.
We remain committed to stimulate a higher economic growth rate and create jobs and build sustainable communities.
Our experience in the past nine years has confirmed the importance of building a strong partnership between government and the people in pursuit of our goal of building a united, democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society.
The recently held, successful Growth and Development Summit provides new possibilities for us to make further advances in solving the problem of the high unemployment rate. The resolution of the Summit confirmed the correctness of our long-held approach of using labour-intensive public works programmes to enhance short-term job creation.
All parties to the Summit agreed to an expansion in public investment initiatives and said "many of these initiatives will be mainstream infrastructure projects with a very strong construction and labour-based component."
The parties also agreed to:
* Address bottlenecks in infrastructure planning and project management for infrastructure development and maintenance;
* Strengthen the design and terms of public-private partnerships, public-community partnerships and construction contracts,
* Promote labour-based construction methods and to identify the types of projects where a deliberate choice in favour of labour-based methods is feasible.
Business also committed itself to "mobilise and make available its skills and expertise. With a view to enhancing the proper project design and management of these projects.
The Gauteng Provincial Government has been exploring the use of labour intensive methods for many years.
Within the Department of Public Transport, Roads and Works a number of programmes in this regard have been set up, including:
* LABMAX, which identifies certain projects with a high, labour absorbing capacity and ensure that it is done in a labour intensive way. Presently about 36% of the provincial government infrastructure budget is spent in this way.
* Community Based Public Works Projects, which focus on labour intensive projects in partnership with other spheres of government, the private sector and non-governmental sector.
* Zivuseni, which focuses on the maintenance of public buildings using labour intensive techniques.
The provincial government has now taken a great leap forward in fulfilling the promise we made at he beginning of our term of office that all our infrastructure projects would promote job creation through the maximisation of the use of labour. We have adopted a strategy to promote labour intensity, which outlines how, working together with the private sector, we will maximise the labour content of our CAPEX project.
Henceforth, all infrastructure projects undertaken by government in Gauteng will be planned taking into account prescribed targets. This requires a paradigm shift by the public and private sector in planning, design, tender specifications and delivery.
Firstly, the planning for these projects will need to identify appropriate targets and performance indicators in respect of labour intensity. Secondly, these projects will need to be designed in a way to meet these targets. Thirdly, the Department of Public Works will monitor these targets and designs as well as provide support to ensure that the targets can be met.
ALL projects will need to spell out their labour content and the number of jobs that are planned to be created in terms of standard definitions provided by the Department of Public Works.
To ensure that implementation of the strategy, the Department of Public Works will ensure the revision of the current procurement framework and the development of pro forma instruments such as new specifications and standard for bills of quantities.
Drawing on a number of studies we are in a position to increase the number of people employed in projects such as road construction and the building of houses and public amenities while maintaining quality and timeframes for delivery. Our aim to maximise the number of jobs created through the appropriate mix of people and equipment.
This is a province-wide programme that involves all the infrastructure development departments in Gauteng. These are: Housing, Development Planning and Local Government, Department of Education, Health, Public Transport, Roads and Works. We also intend to work closely with local and national government.
By spending a sizeable portion of our R5 billion CAPEX in this way, we will make a significant impact on employment creation of poverty.
We are here today to seek your support on new ways to maximize our labour intensive strategy to meet our goal of growing the economy and creating jobs. We call on the private sector and institutions of higher learning to embrace this approach in both public and private projects. Only in this way will the commitment of government and social partners made at the recent Growth and Development Summit, to halve unemployment by 2014, be realised.
Our commitment to the use of public resources to create temporary jobs was once more highlighted with the successful launch of the Zivuseni poverty alleviation projects last year. The extent of poverty and the timeliness of the intervention of the projects are evidenced by the overwhelming response by thousands of potential beneficiaries who enrolled with the project at a number of identified centres throughout the province.
The participants in the Zivuseni programme benefit not only through the income gained from short-term jobs also through skills acquired in the process.
We intend to accelerate the implementation of all our other public works programmes that are aimed at alleviating poverty through short-term job creation.
During the current financial year, R150 million has been set aside to create jobs for 25000 unemployed people, 50% of whom will be women, 25% youth and 1 to 3% people with disabilities.
The two greatest challenges currently are stakeholder attitude and capacity. Attitude in that people either thinks that it is not possible to do o they do not want to do labour intensive construction. Those who want to do it do not have the capacity to do so due to lack of labour intensive construction skills and management capability. This because our training has been for a long time, geared towards conventional methods of construction.
But the Gauteng Government says it can be done and has been done nationally and internationally. What we need is the resolve of all stakeholders to make it happen. We all need to work together to make this a success.
This places certain challenges to the various stakeholders. To construction companies, the shift entails, among others, sourcing of alternative technologies. To tertiary institutions this entails working out and incorporating appropriate curricula whilst to our communities this calls on their vigilance to monitor that contracted construction companies utilise labour intensive methods. To the private sector, this entails, among others, moral support.
The move towards the maximisation of the use of labour intensity is only one pillar of our job creation strategy. Other pillars include our Blue IQ projects which aim to create enabling economic infrastructure to spur investment and economic growth. This should result in the development of long-term sustainable jobs.
While we continue to make good progress in growing the economy the challenge of employment creation remains a pressing one. Another challenge is creating opportunities for black people especially women to participate in the economy as entrepreneurs and owners of wealth.
To respond to these challenges and ensure alignment with the national manufacturing strategy, we embarked last year on a review of our industrial strategy. The new revised strategy which was launched last night focuses on broadening participation in economic activities amongst various business and industrial sectors.
The strategy strives towards the extension of economic benefits to all the people of Gauteng, and identifies pillars designed to progressively address unemployment, poverty and high disparities in income levels are to address the goals of economic participation and extension of economic benefit.
A growth-focus pillar identifies the economic strengths of Gauteng's economy with strategic approaches to harness these, serving as an economic locomotive for the province and the county. The other pillar is a socio-economic pillar, through which strategies are adopted to ensure that economic growth and progress address socio-economic needs in the province.
The three strategic thrusts adopted for the 1997 strategy will be retained and deepened. These thrusts which still forms part of the revised strategy include a move away from traditional, heavy industry input markets towards more sophisticated, high value added manufacturing Gauteng's development as the smart centre of the country; and the development of the finance business service and business tourism sectors.
The two new thrusts cover employment generation and the encouragement of business activity amongst people who do not have existing wealth, assets and skills. This implies a focus on newer, smaller enterprises, rather than on expansions by existing large companies.
Within the framework stipulated by national government, we will provide extensions to the BEE policy and regulatory framework and to support BEE companies through affirmative procurement.
Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) are an important vehicles for economic growth and for addressing the issue of unemployment. In this regard, the province will focus on empowering the youth and women.
We remain on track as a major procurer of goods and services, to ensure that wherever possible our providers are SMEs and from previously disadvantaged communities. More than 50% of contracts to build roads and public building go to previously disadvantaged individuals. During the financial year, 70% of our contracts for the maintenance of our building will go to black contracts.
In our efforts to improve opportunities for SMEs, we have identified that erratic and long delays in payments have made it difficult for small businesses to provide services for government. Through the centralisation of procurement at the GSSC we have managed to reduce such payments times to 30 days on new cases and are striving for even greater efficiencies.
I hereby call on all present to join us on a programme to:
* Stimulate a higher economic growth rate and create job to help millions of our unemployed;
* Create sustainable communities by developing new integrated housing projects and regenerating some of our old places;
* Create short-term employment to help the poorest of the poor;
* Further improve the quality of education to help develop human resources to meet the needs of the new economy.
Issued by Gauteng Provincial Government
25 June 2003
Advertisement
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE SAVE THIS ARTICLE FEEDBACK
To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here
