The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) has created 643 116 work opportunities in the 2010/11 financial year, according to the fourth and last quarter results report released on Wednesday.

The last quarter results for the 2010/11 financial year shows the EPWP continuing to prove its viability as an important catalyst for the creation of decent work opportunities.

The EPWP is a flagship programme of the Public Works department and a means of creating a better life for all people and a better future for the youth.

The 643 116 work opportunities figure reflects an impressive achievement of the programme’s set-target of 642 000 work opportunities for the 2010/11 financial year.

This achievement proves yet again that the programme is making a significant impact in contributing towards government’s concerted efforts of reducing unemployment and poverty by 2014.

Speaking on the release of the figures, Public Works Minister Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde said: “I’ve ordered the department to review the disbursement of the performance based incentive grants to both provincial and local governments, so that we can satisfy ourselves that such measures are cost effective and not open to abuse.”

During her Budget Vote speech, the minister announced that for the 2010/11 financial year, she allocated R679-million for incentive grants to municipalities and R267-million for provinces.

Mahlangu-Nkabinde said as municipalities are at the coalface of service delivery, they require massive injection of relevant resources to ensure the fast-tracking of service delivery.

She said her department will be redeploying some of its skilled human resources from the EPWP to municipalities to strengthen EPWP by assisting with projects in those municipalities where the pace of delivery of infrastructure has been slow due to the shortage of skills.

The minister also emphasised that: “EPWP is a primary driver of job creation within the machinery of government and I have expressed my confidence and conviction in the ability of the department to help combat joblessness and push back the frontiers of poverty within a short period of time.

“An assertion that is confirmed and reaffirmed by these newly released figures which reflect yet another positive delivery milestone of this successful programme.”

However, Mahlangu-Nkabinde said the active participation of the non-state sector entities remained important to maintaining the positive image of the EPWP.

EPWP acting Deputy Director General, Ignatius Ariyo, said: “The performance of the programme indicates that the EPWP is on track to meet the target of 4.5-million work opportunities by March 2014.

“The report also shows that the non-state and social sectors exceeded their targets. The focus is to ensure that the momentum achieved so far in EPWP phase 2 is not lot, but increased.”

According to Ariyo, the infrastructure sector continued to contribute the largest number of work opportunities while the social sector created jobs with a longer lifespan.

On the sector breakdown, the infrastructure sector created 277 100, environmental and culture 107 189, social 131 979, non-state sector 92 136 and non-profit organisations 34 712.

He further said KwaZulu-Natal had the largest number of work opportunities created in total with the bulk of the jobs created in the infrastructure sector. The province is closely followed by the Eastern Cape and Gauteng.

However, the figure also reflects that more work still needs to be done in the Free State, Northern Cape, North West and Mpumalanga in terms of meeting the targets.