Addressing unemployment and poverty through public works programmes in South Africa

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The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) is one of South African government’s short-to-medium term programmes aimed at providing additional work opportunities coupled with training. It is a national programme which covers all spheres of government and state-owned enterprises. The EPWP is a programme which cuts across all government departments and all spheres of government. Under the EPWP all government bodies are required to make a systematic effort to target the unskilled unemployed. They will do this by formulating plans to utilise their budgets to draw significant numbers of the unemployed into productive work. This must be done in such a way that workers gain skills while they work. This will increase their chances of getting out of the marginalised pool of unemployed people. The Department of Public Works acknowledges the critical role played by its multiple partners and implementing bodies, and that its achievements are the result of this collective resolve to critically reduce the numbers of unemployed people in the country, and to provide access to skills in the process. The EPWP is committed to create one million job opportunities by 2009 and fulfil the Millennium Development Goals specifically the objective to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014. This paper is providing an overview of the EPWP, with an emphasis on the infrastructure, unemployment reduction and creating employment opportunities. Key words: Poverty, unemployment, infrastructure, labour-intensive, public works programme