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Hundreds promised jobs to fix potholes

Cape Town - The department of public works has committed to training and employing about 400 unemployed people per metro in the country to work on its pothole programme.

"The president has declared the year 2011/12 as the year of jobs... the programme to fix potholes creates jobs. Metros should provide us (the department) with a list of unemployed people who we will train and then appoint," the deputy director general for projects at the department, Mandla Mabuza, told a parliamentary portfolio committee on public works on Tuesday.

"The case study that informs the allocation of beneficiaries is one kilometre of road translates to two work opportunities."

However, people would be employed for a period of about six months. During this time they would earn about R90 a day working three days a week.

Met with strong criticism from committee members about the short-term job period, Mabuza said that other such programmes existed within government and that once people completed a term in one programme, they were sourced to another programme.

"Eventually you will be able to inherit young people already in programmes. So you will get people who are unemployed and those that are already in existing programmes."

He said once the six-month period was over, other roads with potholes would be identified "to extend the job opportunity period beyond the six months".

The department would also need to focus attention on rural areas in terms of fixing potholes and creating jobs.

"The focus on metros only was an oversight on the part of the department. We take the point to focus more on rural as opposed to metros," Mabuza said.

The department's extended public works programme included the infrastructure, environment and culture and non-state sectors.

Mabuza said 246 projects existed within the infrastructure sector. These projects created 5 272 work opportunities.

Contributing departments to the infrastructure sector were correctional services, justice and constitutional development, the department of agriculture, public works and the department of police.

The environment and culture sector created 45 983 work opportunities.

Contributing departments to this sector were environmental affairs, tourism, public works and water affairs.

The non-state sector constituted the community works programme and non-profit organisations. This sector had created 91 430 work opportunities.

Mabuza said the department aimed to create "at least 100 days of work a year".

The deputy director general for the extended public works programme, Stanley Henderson, said the department's major objective was to "draw poor, unemployed people into the world of work".
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