About 1 000 people in Makana have been employed part-time to make the area more beautiful, tasked with jobs like cleaning up schools and old-age homes and planting vegetable gardens.
About 1 000 people in Makana have been employed part-time to make the area more beautiful, tasked with jobs like cleaning up schools and old-age homes and planting vegetable gardens.
Dressed in orange overalls, these civil servants are really making Makana a better place to be.
But members of the so-called Community Work Programme (CWP) teams aren't municipal workers – they're part of a national Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Department initiative.
The department is using NGOs in all nine provinces to implement the project as a way of beautifying cities and providing employment.
The NGO running the CWP in the Eastern Cape is Border Rural Committee (BRC) and former Makana councillor Xolani Simakuhle has been hired to facilitate the project locally.
"We work with municipalities… My role is to facilitate the programme in the Makana area and conduct training for those who are working in the project," Simakuhle told Grocott's Mail this week.
"We also do food gardening and soup kitchens and we identify open spaces with the help of the municipality to start sustainable projects that we can work with."
He said the project was rolled out in Makana last October and they work with all government stakeholders in Makana.
Although CWP doesn't offer full-time employment, those who work for the programme get a wage of R60 per day and work eight days per month, Simakuhle said.
The project has encountered some problems, he said, like late payments from their national implementing agent, Teba Development Bank.
"The payment is late, sometimes they don't get paid. The challenge is that Teba is the one responsible for payments and also with the workers some just decide to change banking details… and they fail to inform us on time and then end up not getting paid," Simakuhle said.
To remedy the situation Simakuhle said they have elected supervisors for each team, which comprises of around 25 workers.
"We have trained [the supervisors]in conflict resolution, basic finance administration and home-based care. This will help us because if one decides to change banking details they will inform their supervisor and I meet with them monthly and get feedback from them," he said.
