10 June 2004
Madame Speaker
Honourable Members
It is a great honour to participate on this debate at the start of the second decade of the hard won democracy in South Africa.
When the ANC was elected into power in 1994 one of the main issues raised by the majority of South Africans was a need for ANC government to provide shelter to disadvantaged communities. Everywhere we went as ANC, the housing need was on top of the agenda, hence the ANC through its manifesto promised to reach a target of one million in five years. Today we are proud to say this ANC government has approved 1,9 million housing subsidies and 1,6 million houses built for the poor of our country. More than 70% households have been electrified and many, many other great achievements.
Today, ten years later even though there is still some housing backlog, the key need of the majority is to fight poverty and create employment hence ANC has committed itself to a people’s contract to fight the above. Through this contract, job creation, broad-based black economic empowerment and skills development are uppermost pillars.
Through Vote 6 of public works programme the ANC again will make sure we keep our promise we made to the poor majority of our country.
President Thabo Mbeki outlined the government business plan when he addressed this parliament on 23 May 2004.
We will not disappoint our voters who showed confidence in this government. They came out in big numbers confident that the ANC government continue to improve their lives and the lives of many other people.
The Department of Public Works is one department where confusion, under spending and unnecessary expenditure was a daily phenomenon. Previous Auditors General’s reports bear testimony to that. Today great improvement has taken place but lots of challenges still face this department as outlined by the Minister and the speaker before me. Even the opposition (Mr Blanche) has acknowledged that. Nevertheless we still have a long way to go.
Construction
Since 1995 DPW has sought to create and nurture new black owned enterprises in the construction and building industry and a number of initiatives to promote black economic empowerment have been launched. These include Consultant Roster Affirmative Procurement Policy and the Emerging Contractor Development Programme and many more. The need for programme to promote the participation of women contractors in mainstream construction has been a consistent demand from women contracting fraternity.
Hence women have been at the heart of NPW programme with procurement and points allocation bias towards them and youth construction companies.
The Emerging Contractor Development Programme (ECDP) has sponsored and facilitated training of about 390 people and 150 of these were women. Some of the methods used in this training are of international standards developed by International Labour Organisation. This particular training provides contractors with tendering, marketing and resource management skills.
To date contracts to the total value of R 276m have been awarded to women owned business enterprises. This was largely made possible through implementation of Target Procurement Policies. Even with the targeted procurement it is not enough to develop and empower women owned businesses, another constrain is the supply side. The Minister and the department have the responsibility to open avenues for women contractors to specialise on the supply side.
Even though ECDP has gone this far in empowering small contractors, it has not succeeded in graduating these contractors into meaningful industry players. This of course is a cause for concern as the status quo of those who have dominated this industry continue to remain as such, even ten years into democratic change. We view this as a serious matter and the department must outline how they are going to change the status quo. We want to see these contractors as big as Murray & Roberts coming from the ranks of those that have been previously disadvantaged. With the expanded public works programme in place all departments in particular public works must see that emerging contractors particularly women, youth and disabled benefit most at micro and macro level. Emerging contractors must graduate to established contractors and not get engaged at sub-contracting level only or remain small forever. In this instance the Department has many faceted responsibilities. One being to take a close look at tools used for labour intensive programmes. What we need are simple tools that that are not sophisticated but can produce powerful quality work.
Some challenges faced by women owned businesses:
Commercial banks are still reluctant to assist emerging contractors. Conditions put forward by banks make it impossible for these contractors to succeed. We congratulate ABSA for attempting to assist in this area and make a call to other banks to follow suit. Khula Enterprise and Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) entered into partnership agreement with government and ECDP with regard to assisting contractors to access finance in order to improve their lives and lives of the poor majority.
In the process of Public Works assisting the emerging contractors in accessing jobs and becoming participants in the construction industry in a sustainable way, the same department has to deal with serious challenges in assisting these contractors to higher levels. The incubator programme is the one envisaged to focus on that, and the Minister must clearly specify how this programme will work better than others. Monitoring and evaluation will have to be done in order for Parliament to intervene where necessary. By the way it is us members of Parliament who have to answer to the voters out there when delivery is not taking place.
Youth and Skills Development
Madam Speaker, South Africa has a big challenge to create an environment that continuously attracts the youth to complete their schooling and aspire to further develop themselves, to meet future socio-economic challenges of South Africa.
Of the many challenges, construction sector has even bigger challenges than other areas. The 2004 status report of the construction sector, which was published in April, states that the average age of a built environment professional is about fifty-three years old. This means the construction sector faces a potential crisis in the next seven to ten years if anything drastic is not done to attract youth into the sector to replace and enhance the built environment skills base of South Africa.
If this sector is to attract youth and enhance its skills base, it is critical that stakeholders in the construction industry come together to:
The main mechanisms for attracting youth is also to focus on their interests which include sport, music and television.
Furthermore, the skills development initiative implemented in partnership between the DPW and Defence will go a long way towards contributing to skills development of the sector. The sector has a potential to absorb qualified and disciplined built environment graduates who have completed a year of a basic military and functional training. These youth will be a different kind of breed of public servants and role models to the younger generation.
Fortunately, all parties in this house say one thing when it comes to the need to deal with unemployment and skills development. Therefore no party will want to score political points but we must all contribute and support our government in fulfilling the task of delivering one million jobs in the next five years.
I thank you Madam Speaker.