expanded public works programme (epwp) phase 3 green jobs …€¦ · expanded public works...

Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) Phase 3

Green Jobs Summit

09 April 2014

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Outline

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BACKGROUND OF EPWP

Origin of EPWP EPWP Phase 1 (2004 – 2009) EPWP Phase 2 (2009 – 2014) South Africa a Global Innovator in Public Employment Programmes (PEPs) Key Lessons from EPWP Phases 1 & 2 The “Trilemma” Facing EPWP

DESIGN OF EPWP PHASE 3

Policy Context for EPWP Phase 3 Paradigm Shifts in EPWP (Phase 1 – Phase 3) Environment and Culture Sector in Phase 3 conclusion

Outline … continued

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EPWP PHASE 3

Training and Graduation in EPWP Phase 3 Convergence and Synergies EPWP Phase 3 Employment Targets Focus of EPWP Phase 3 Institutional Arrangements for EPWP Phase 3 Key Changes in EPWP Phase 3

BACKGROUND OF EPWP

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Origin of EPWP

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The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) (1994) called for “a coordinated national public works programme to provide much needed infrastructure, to repair environmental damage, and to link back into…the industrial and agricultural base…”, coordinated by “a national coordinating agency located in the implementing office of the RDP.”

The idea of a “national coordinating agency” got side-lined with the closing of the RDP Office in

1996. Government’s focus shifted to rapidly creating formal sector employment through macroeconomic-facilitated growth (GEAR 1996 envisaged 1 million new formal, largely private sector jobs over 5 years).

Nonetheless, there were important early PEP initiatives led by the Department of Public Works (DPW) (labour intensity in construction), the Department of Water Affairs (Working for Water – launched 1995), and some provincial roads departments (notably KwaZulu–Natal (KZN) with household-based maintenance of allocated stretches of rural roads).

Notwithstanding sustained Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth touching 5% in the first decade after 1994, structural poverty, inequality and unemployment remained stubbornly high (the latter never coming under 20%).

EPWP Phase 1 (2004-2009)

In this context, following the 2003 Growth and Development Summit, Government agreed on a massification of the public works programme – EPWP phase 1 with a 5-year target of 1 million work opportunities.

The key assumption (at the time) was economic growth in the “first economy” was not impacting upon the “second economy” – hence the need for targeted developmental programmes (SMME Development, Taxi Recapitalization Project and EPWP) as once-off ladders to “graduate” “second economy” activities into “formal economy”.

Phase 1 achieved its 1 million work opportunities target one-year ahead (2008) of schedule – but unemployment remained stubbornly high, and worsened from 2008 – with onset of global economic crisis.

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EPWP Phase 2 – (2009-2014)

Encouraged by success of massification in Phase 1 (1 million work opportunities in 4 years), and responding to local job-loss crisis linked to global economic crisis – Phase 2 set an ambitious 4,5 million work opportunities target. We are on track to meet the work opportunities target by the end of March 2014. Phase 2 has also seen new developments – including: introduction of the Non-State

sector, which has two programmes, namely Community Work Programme and Non-Profit Organisation programme, and the National, Provincial and Municipal EPWP Incentive.

Government’s New Growth Path policy (2010) clearly broke with “first” and “second”

economy paradigm – it’s the MAINSTREAM economy that has systemic challenges.

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South Africa a Global Innovator in PEPs

With chronic unemployment, even in many developed economies, the scale and innovative achievements of SA’s PEPs have attracted international interest. However, we have not sufficiently communicated these achievements at home!

Uniquely, our PEPs cut across several sectors. They are championed through different line departments, provinces and municipalities and they have both a rural and urban focus.

Labour intensive methods are mainstreamed into Government infrastructure contracting rather than having PEPs operating in separate silos.

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SA has been a global pioneer in applying PEPs on scale to environmental services – Working for Water (WfW), Working on Fire, Working for Wetlands, etc. • The WfW programme has possibly saved as much as R400 billion

(CSIR), cleared over 2 million hectares of alien invasive plants, and prevented loss of 71% of grazing.

• Working on Fire in 2007/2008 saved the forestry industry alone R3,7 billion – on a budget of R123 million.

South Africa a Global Innovator in PEPs … continued

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South Africa a Global Innovator in PEPs … continued

SA is still the only country in the world with a range of PEPs in the social sector – including adult education, early childhood care, school-feeding schemes, school safety and homework supervision programmes. Home-based care programmes have been a major response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Through the EPWP Non-State Sector programmes, namely the

Community Work Programme (CWP) and Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs), we are working closely with NPOs, which are inclusive of non-governmental organisations, faith based organisations and community based organisations – an important counter-weight to the dangers of excessive bureaucratisation of PEPs .

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Case Study – Impact of Working for Water • SA’s water loss because of alien invasive plants = est. R6.5 billion, p.a. • Without WfW this figure would be in the region of R41.7 billion • The net present value of all control operations up to the end of 2011 would

be in the order of R453 billion.

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Leandre Arends - WfW team member in De Hoop

Key Lessons from EPWP Phases 1 & 2

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Lesson 1: Clarify Key Objective of a Particular Programme The “Trilemma” of PEPs

Sustainable household livelihoods

Provision of Assets & Services

Skills Development

PEP’s development

potential lies in providing all three of these outcomes- but there are trade-offs between them

in practice

For different programmes, sectors and

contexts optimal balance between these 3 will vary

Increasing one output… is likely to result in decreases in the others

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Different strengths of different programmes

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• Working on Fire – skilled work and training, relatively

long term involvement, excellent graduation prospects – but low numbers (5000 fire-fighters p.a.)

• Community Work Programme – less training but possibilities to scale-up rapidly to over 1m w/o’s p.a. – contributes to local community cohesion and ownership

Key Lessons from EPWP Phases 1 & 2 … continued

Lesson 2: Achieve better balance between work opportunity headcounts and other outcomes Work opportunity targets are very important – but we need to balance these with other indicators, including: • Full-time equivalents • Evaluation of post-participation outcomes for beneficiaries • Evaluation of assets and services produced • Impact on communities This will require refining our Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) capacities

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Lesson 4: Perception of risk for public bodies taking on EPWP projects Three major factors accounting for perception of risk • Concern that labour-intensive methods are slow and the quality is poor. We need

to: – Include labour-intensive methods in the training curriculum of the engineering

profession • Concern over compliance challenges – reporting and supply chain requirements. We

need to: – stream-line reporting mechanisms; and – proactively assist provincial departments and municipalities, etc.

• Concern over expectations of participants for full-time employment at completion of project

– need to clarify and communicate nature of particular project more effectively – develop realistic exit strategies that are linked to the programme, resource

these with appropriate training and ensure the participation of the responsible Departments

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Key Lessons from EPWP Phases 1 & 2 …

continued

Lesson 5: Mitigate risk of projects being captured for patronage purposes

• There are community accusations that the selection of EPWP

participants is hijacked by politicians for patronage purposes • Can undermine key developmental outcome forging of

community cohesion through collective productive work • Community co-ownership, including community oversight of PEP

projects, is the key to averting the risk of clientelism/patronage • The role of community based organisations and other NPOs is

proving useful in this regard, in both the CWP and in the EPWP NGO sector

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Lesson 6: The need for much greater co-ordination The scale, diversity and innovative nature of SA’s PEP programmes = a major achievement…but also a challenge: • More work needs to be done in relation to common branding • Poorly coordinated public communication on achievements across PEP programmes; • insufficient sharing of lessons across programmes; and • insufficient co-ordination between PEPs and other potentially related Government

policies, strategies and initiatives – adult education and training; SMME and Co-ops development; sustainable livelihoods; and food security programmes, etc.

This is the key lesson from the past 10 years, and prime reason for the November 2013 Cabinet decision to establish a Presidential Coordinating Commission for PEPs in the new administration

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EPWP PHASE 3

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Policy Context for EPWP Phase 3

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The National Development Plan (NDP) calls for the expansion of EPWP and outlines

two key objectives:

• Contribute to reducing unemployment by creating temporary employment by being responsive to the number of unemployed. “The Public Employment Programmes should target the creation of 2 million work opportunities annually by 2020, or earlier, if possible…” “The main opportunities will lie in community based services and the roll out of social sector initiatives.” (NDP Chapter 3)

• Contribute to social protection for the unemployed by providing them with income support (Chapter 11).

In the New Growth Path, EPWP is seen as an important contributor in Jobs Driver 1

(Infrastructure Development) through increasing the labour intensity of Government infrastructure investments and Jobs Driver 4 (Social Capital) through expansion of the Community Work Programme.

Greater coordination across range of PEPs, and between PEPs and other developmental initiatives (training, SMME and coop development). Better Monitoring and Evaluation of what happens post-participation, and on impact of services and assets created especially in poor communities. Increase scope of infrastructure maintenance.

PHASE

I

PHASE

III

PHASE

II

Paradigm Shifts in EPWP (Phase 1 – Phase 3)

EPWP designed to bridge gap between so–called 1st and 2nd economy. Too many expectations created for the Programme, such as maximising the spread and skilling all beneficiaries to be exited into the mainstream economy.

During the period of EPWP Phase 1, economic growth was between 5 – 6%. However , almost 1 million jobs were lost in the economy. Realisation that unemployment is not only cyclical, but more fundamentally structural. EPWP needs to be integrated into strategies to address the systemic nature of unemployment and poverty in SA.

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Phase 3 objective

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“To provide work opportunities and income support to the poor and unemployed through the delivery of public and community assets and services, thereby contributing to development.”

EPWP Phase 3 Employment Targets

EPWP Phase 3 Infrastructure Sector

Environment and Culture

Sector

Social Sector NPO CWP Total

2014/15 379,000 227,650 202,714 52,825 213,000 1,075,189

2015/16 447,219 229,000 205,307 48,500 217,000 1,147,026

2016/17 487,219 230,500 205,968 48,400 226,000 1,198,087

2017/18 534,219 231,000 210,496 48,565 231,000 1,255,280

2018/19 587,219 233,000 214,444 48,755 241,000 1,324,418

Totals 2,434,876 1,151,150 1,038,929 247,045 1,128,000 6,000,000

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Training and Graduation in EPWP Phase 3

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For all the EPWP sectors, project based training aimed at capacitating EPWP participants remains an important part of EPWP.

At the same time, it is recognized that the role and importance of training varies considerably from sector to sector, and sub-programme to sub-programme, and each sector will have to develop its own appropriate training policy and strategy.

Strong collaboration with the National Skills Fund and Skills Education and Training Agencies (SETA’s) will be continued to source funding for training of participants. Sectors will also be encouraged to dedicate a portion of their implementation budgets for training of beneficiaries. There is also important potential for synergising PEPs and the Department of Higher Educations proposed Community Colleges.

Where possible the graduation of EPWP beneficiaries into formal employment will be promoted through various initiatives, including cooperatives and small enterprise development.

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Implementation Framework 1. Geographic targeting

What will we do? Implementation Strategy to achieve this

Target poverty nodes • Use Stats SA and CoGTA data to identify the poorest areas • The sector will focus on targeting poverty nodes in all instances, except where the service

area (e.g. catchment area, wetland, etc.) concerned is outside of such nodes.

Employ local labour • Consider all labour within the relevant municipal area in which the project will be undertaken as ‘local’ labour.

2. Beneficiary targeting What will we do? Implementation Strategy to achieve this

Selection of each worker done on a clear set of criteria - 2 sets of recruitment/ selection criteria will apply: (a) EPWP criteria (base criteria); (b) Project specific criteria (additional elimination criteria). In terms of expanding work for the EPWP target group: • An EPWP project must provide work to a large number of EPWP

beneficiaries; defined as: o The poor and o The unemployed, willing and able to take up the offered

work at the offered pay o Local labour (living close to the project area).

• Preference will be given to the empowering of, women, youth and persons with disabilities o 55% of beneficiaries should be women o 55% of beneficiaries should be youth o 2% of beneficiaries should be people with disabilities.

• Stats SA definition of the unemployed will be utilised

• Poverty indicators that can be used by programmes: o Eligibility for social grants o Being on the indigent list o Being on DoL work seeker database or the

National Council for Persons with Disabilities’ database

o Those unable to access any social grants o Period of unemployment o Number of dependencies.

(b) Project specific criteria will define any educational, skills, physical or other criteria relevant to perform the tasks required in the project.

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Implementation Framework 2. Beneficiary targeting


Target a 100 day duration for each WO

• Not intended to redesign programmes to be unnecessarily longer; but rather to focus EPWP efforts on programmes implementing providing sufficient opportunities for work, as opposed to ‘short emergency interventions’.

• The targeted minimum duration of work must be part of any new programme/project design.

Implement a beneficiary recruitment process that is fair, transparent and accessible to those who require EPWP work

There are 4 key elements to the agreed recruitment of EPWP workers: (a) Common source to identify the poor and unemployed in a locality:

• DPW is required to facilitate the consolidation of, or access to, various databases to be used as a source by public bodies and implementing agents for recruiting EPWP workers.

(b) Clear, fair and transparent process that will include: • Open advertisement in the relevant community of the potential work available, the

number of positions, the required criteria to be met and details of when and how to apply. This should be explained in various community/ local fora.

• Sourcing from the various databases • Clear selection process

(c) Compliance with the agreed process by all implementing agents (d) Where there are already local structures in place for recruiting, which the public

body/ IA chooses to utilise, the public body/ IA must ensure that the process is not unduly influenced.

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Implementation Framework 3. Project Design


Target appropriate wage levels • Target of 35% LI of programme budget (37.5% of the project budget) • Minimum wages as per the annual Ministerial Determination • Target of 100 day WOs for a minimum income transfer per beneficiary

Criteria for project selection • Contribute to the sector’s

objectives in one of the agreed focus areas

• Comply with programme norms and standards

• Comply with sector norms and reach sector targets

• Comply with the Ministerial Determination and Code of Good Practice.

• Comply with the implementation framework

• Consistent minimum criteria for IAs applied

To facilitate this, the following actions will be pursued: • An E&C EPWP scorecard will be developed which can be used by any public body/ IA

to identify an EPWP programme/ project or test their compliance with the set standards. The scorecard will: o Define an E&C EPWP programme o Set out the standards set in the implementation framework o Wage band proposed for E&Cs programmes/projects o Reference the various EPWP frameworks that must be complied with and indicate

where these can be obtained o Reference the norms and standards documents for various E&Cs programmes and

indicate where these can be obtained • Compliance Monitoring will include:

o Monitoring performance and identify non-complying programmes/projects o Identifying the cause of non-compliance o Supporting the programme/project to formulate and implement corrective actions.

• Convergence of wage rates for similar programmes: The sector will pursue developing a guideline that assists similar programmes to determine an appropriate scale of pay and converge towards a common wage band.

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Implementation Framework 3. Project Design


Work towards convergence

The approach is to: • Develop a more defined coordination role for CoGTA to facilitate municipal coordination • Establish an EPWP champion closer to the Municipal Manager in all participating municipalities • Include the E&Cs EPWP targets and scorecard in performance agreements for executive

management • Amend existing protocols to include provincial and lead sector department roles • Sign a Sector Pact setting out the commitment to EPWP and the modus operandi by all participating

departments in E&C

4. Training


Develop a Sector Training Policy for Phase III

Actions to prepare the E&C Sector Training Strategy for Phase III: • Expand the list of sector priority courses • Programmes to have a training plan and budget developed in year 1 of Phase III, based on a skills

audit • Identify the obstacles, and improvement actions for proper reporting on training going forward so

that there is a better overview of the type and frequency of training being provided through EPWP programmes/projects.

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Implementation Framework 5. Support Strategies


Technical Support extended to programmes to cover: • EPWP Planning – ALL • Project Design and Documentation of Technical Guidelines – ALL • Implementation Support – targeted depending on requests

6. Expansion Strategies


Strategy 1: Creating additional work through the immediate expansion of existing projects, EPWP Planning – ALL Strategy 2: Shifting existing project funding strategies, mainly to allow for cost sharing between the different stakeholders who benefit from the project. Each programme will apply this expansion strategy differently. Focus on: • Supporting the use of community contracting and contractor development at municipal level • Developing partnerships and leveraging other funding areas for the value-added component of programmes – training for

exit, enterprise and partnership development, etc. Strategy 3: Initiating new projects Strategy 4: Partnering with provincial implementers Strategy 5: Redesigning other departmental programmes to contribute to EPWP.

Convergence and Synergies

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As the EPWP keeps growing, both in terms of overall scale and the number of sub-programmes, concerns of possible areas of overlap and duplication have increased.

Given the plans for further growth, it is important these concerns are addressed. The concerns for duplication and overlap are most prominent between CWP and

Sector Programmes, and the Social Sector and NPO Programmes.

Creating synergies between all EPWP Sectors - rather than merely managing overlap and duplication. An important objective for Phase 3 is to build greater convergence between the CWP and other sector programmes, so that instead of duplication, these are complementarity, e.g. using Working for Water to train CWP projects in clearing invasive aliens in their particular locality.

Likewise, there are many possibilities for enhanced synergies between EPWP

programmes in the Social and NPO sectors.

Focus of EPWP Phase 3

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Build a common EPWP brand

Improve targeting of participants through community participation

Improve the monitoring & evaluation of qualitative aspects

Improve the strategic and operational aspects of the EPWP, aiming to improve implementation

Introduce a greater degree of uniformity and standardization across the various EPWP Programmes through the introduction of universal principles

Strengthen collaboration and synergies amongst lead departments and other stakeholders – sharing best practice and lessons

Increase EPWP Contribution

to Development

Institutional Arrangements for EPWP Phase 3 To achieve better synergy between our wide range of PEPs and other poverty alleviation, employment, enterprise development and skills development initiatives, Cabinet (November 2013) has agreed: That a Presidential Public Employment Coordinating Commission be established.

The Commission should be chaired by the President or Deputy President and should meet quarterly.

It should be composed of relevant Ministers, the nine Premiers and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA).

It should be supported by a Political Management Committee of relevant Ministers, and a Political Secretariat of relevant Ministers and Deputy Ministers.

The Commission should have two major work streams - PEPs and Employment, and PEPs and Sustainable Livelihoods.

Its technical secretariat should be the DPW’s current EPWP Branch, working closely with other relevant line department branches.

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3 Thank You Ke a leboga Ms Kelebogile Sethibelo Chief Director: EPWP Operations DPW Tel: 087 357 2239\ Cell: 082 3344 322 Email: [email protected]

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