Premier: half of bread is better than nothing

PREMIER Stanley Mathabatha told the community of Nkuri village in Giyani not to listen to critics that government’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) was not helping enough people to find employment.

Speaking at a sod-turning event in the village to launch the tarring of a 22km stretch of road from Giyani CBD to the village, the premier said: “it is easy to criticise if you have only read about poverty in newspapers.

“Those of us who know poverty know very well that half of bread is better than nothing”.

According to Mathabatha, those who criticised the programme did so because they had nothing to offer.

“I have no doubt that the majority of our people appreciate the relentless efforts of their government to release them from the clutches of unemployment and poverty.”

Turning to roads, the premier said government had in the past five years focussed more on rehabilitation and maintenance of the aging road infrastructure, especially those that connected the major economic towns of the province.

He said the tarring of Nkuri road would not only benefit the economy of Giyani, but will leave the locals with skills they could use to fight poverty.

“We can say with certainty that after this project is done, the people of this area will still continue to benefit from the skills they would have acquired during the time of its construction,” he said.

The premier said while the construction of the road would in itself provide construction job opportunities for the locals, when the project was done there would still be job opportunities through the transport and roads EPWP programme, since the maintenance of the road would be done manually in order to create jobs.

“I have been reliably informed that this road and many of our roads in the province will be routinely serviced using a labour-intensive approach to create jobs for the locals,” he said.

The maintenance work is said to include fence repair, cleaning draining structures, bush clearing, potholes patching and grass cutting.