Mid-term review of the Expanded Public Works Programme: research report: component one: perceptions of the EPWP by government officials

Abstract

South Africa faces a high rate of unemployment within its working age population, with a large proportion of this population lacking the skills and/or opportunities to earn a living and participate actively in our economy. Recent official estimates (March 2006) place the unemployment rate at about 25.6% of the working age population, which amounts to nearly 4, 3 million people. Whilst this is lower than some past measures unemployment was estimated at 29.7% in the previous year, and peaked at 31.2% in 20032 - the rate is still of great concern. The Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) was initiated in 2003 to draw significant numbers of the unemployed into productive work, so that workers gain skills while they work, and increase their capacity to earn an income. The EPWP framework has been built on existing job creation programmes focussed on introducing labour intensive methods which can still maintain cost efficiency and quality of output. Based on the fact that most unemployed people are relatively unskilled, as well as the principle that the causes of unemployment in South Africa are structural rather than cyclical, the EPWP aims to provide additional and mostly temporary work opportunities which are combined with training, in all spheres of government and state owned enterprises. The training element has been considered to be crucial in the current situation where the large majority (70%) of the unemployed youth have never been employed, and 69% of all unemployed have never had a job before. Ongoing monitoring and evaluation has been a core part of the programme, and the M&E framework that has been established has been the basis for a number of evaluation studies. The EPWP is now halfway through its five year time frame, and is undertaking a formal mid-term review, in order to understand progress to date and guide future developments.