Metro to prioritise employment to improve service delivery
Tshwane is the first municipality to implement such a programme.
Recruiting artisans is a priority for the Tshwane metro, according to mayor Solly Msimanga.
Msimanga told the council during his state of the capital address on Thursday that plumbers, electricians and technicians were critical to the city if it were to “expand its delivery capabilities”.
He said increasing the workforce would enable the metro to improve the speed with which it responded to residents’ complaints.
Msimanga said that the municipality’s customer care centres had improved since the administration took office.
Close to 300 permanent jobs had been created.
The city metro said it had to “clean up” the recruitment process before it could create any work opportunities.
Msimanga said significant changes had to be made to the extended public works programme’s (EPWP) recruitment policy to eliminate patronage and nepotism.
“To date, we have held three lotteries – the latest in February – where beneficiaries are randomly chosen, which gives each applicant a fair chance of being selected,” he said.
“Significantly, the City designed the database in such a manner that we can appoint EPWP beneficiaries by their age, the ward where they live, their skill-set and gender, without referring to their political affiliation.”
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The programme would create close to 23 000 jobs: 12 200 in the infrastructure sector, 10 250 in the social sector and 550 in the environmental and cultural sector.
Some of the projects that have already seen 6 125 people employed include the Garsfontein water network replacement, Prasa’s initiative to restore railway lines in Tshwane, and re-gravelling and maintenance operations of roads in Bronkhorstspruit.
A project initiated by the department of roads and transport to assist job seekers with free transport in Bronkhorstspruit was launched.
Msimanga said one area per day was provided with two buses to ferry jobseekers to and from the dedicated location for CV submissions.
“In one week, more than 5 000 unemployed people were provided with free transport to submit their CVs,” he said.
To improve youth skills development, Msimanga said the metro joined a programme to train chartered accountants through the SA Institute of Chartered Accountants.
“This is a three-year leadership programme that allows trainees to qualify as finance professionals. The first batch of nine learners started their training in November 2017.”
Tshwane is the first municipality to implement such a programme.
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The programme is expected to enrol about 10 trainees from previously disadvantaged communities every year, thus assisting to advance the black economic empowerment (BEE) objectives of the city while addressing youth unemployment.
“The City will achieve the objective of creating chartered accountants who are industry experts in the public sector – best placed to add value and to help improve overall financial management in the public sector, thereby injecting much-needed skills to improve service delivery.”
Msimanga expressed his concern that unemployment too often led to drug abuse, which in turn led to other crimes that often included the theft of the city’s infrastructure.
“Realising a need for a specialised drug operations team, we immediately established the Tshwane metro police anti-drug unit with the sole purpose of fighting and eliminating drug-abuse in the communities of Tshwane,” he said.
“Members of the unit were given additional training and equipment to take this battle to the next level, and I am happy to say that across the city, drug lords and peddlers are now feeling the heat.”
Msimanga said the city was funding the department of home medicine at the University of Pretoria’s community-oriented substance use programme Cosup, which helps “addicts overcome addiction and helps them face the social and psychological challenges that contributed to their addiction”.
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