The official launch and handover of the provincial Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) from the Department of Transport to the Department of Public Works in KwaZulu-Natal, at a historic event in Richmond, hosted by the former Premier of KwaZulu-Natal, Mr Senzo Edward Mchunu in May 2015 was a significant milestone that began to reshape the provincial government towards changing peoples’ lives for the better. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Public Works will host its 4th annual EPWP Focus Week as from Monday 16 to 30 November 2020 at identified and confirmed municipalities within the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
The programme is currently driven by the department’s EPWP Provincial Coordination directorate. The directorate serves as a nucleus coordinating the entire programme for targeted beneficiaries co-opting other provincial departments and all municipalities in the province with the inclusion of interested participating private and non-governmental stakeholders. To date the department has been engulfed into a tough period of coordinating, assessing, evaluating and managing progress made and stepping up the pace to achieving socio-economic transformation that would gradually assist in dealing with poverty but also reach the realisation of the provincial cabinet’s key strategic goals.
Since 2015, the department took a toll order as the programme gained ground, subsequently, positive results were registered, amid some sporadic barriers which kept emerging and slightly hampered service delivery. It is a fact that the programme has expanded to all municipalities and equally acknowledged that there were and still are continued gloomy reports on the programme deficiencies. The EPWP’s current state of affairs indicates that it is multidisciplinary (involving youth, women and persons with disabilities) , cross-cutting, has long duration of spanning years rather than months, is influenced by a wide range of interested citizenry and other cooperatives or stakeholders with different degrees of commitment and adds value to social change. However, it is also a fact that it has risks and negative impacts to those who suffer its ‘disbenefits’ – such as programme mismanagement, non-compliance and a negative beneficiary or labour turnover, when volunteers or beneficiaries register unwarranted complaints due to corruption and maladministration.
