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Cape Town - Despite soaring unemployment figures, the acting director-general of the Department of Public Works on Monday gave his assurance that the president's job-creation promises would be met this year.
In his State of the Nation address in June President Jacob Zuma announced his ambitious plan to create 500 000 temporary jobs by year-end through this department's expansive public works programme. He then, in the debate on the presidency's budget vote. said the job-creation programme included steps to avoid summary retrenchments.
By 2014 some 4.5 million jobs need to be created by means of this programme.
But members of parliament, during a sitting of the select committee on finance, appeared sceptical about meeting this promise, especially in light of the latest unemployment figures.
Just last week Sake24 reported that some 475 000 jobs had so far been lost in South Africa this year, according to the latest quarterly labour survey by Statistics South Africa.
Nchaupe Malebye, the acting director-general of the Department of Public Works, on Friday assured doubting MPs that his department would be able to fulfil Zuma's promise of creating 500 000 jobs this year.
"We have the capacity to reach this target.
"We are studying the situation [with regard to job creation and unemployment] on a daily basis," Malebye said.
Mshiyeni Sogoni, chairperson of the standing committee for the joint budget, however said that he wished he could get reports showing that the department had indeed been induced to create these positions.
Malebye assured members that the department would itself create the jobs and that consultants would not be employed to reach the department's target.
Committee members mentioned examples of the increasing use of machinery like tractors to cut the grass alongside roads, rather than appointing more workers. The objective of the public works programme is precisely to use less mechanisation in order to create more work.
Malebye undertook to raise this issue during the upcoming discussions between the Minister of Public Works and the provincial MECs on August 20.
For more business news in Afrikaans, go to Sake24.com
- Sake24