By Richard Mantu
GAUTENG Premier Mbhazima Shilowa has urged the provincial Community Development Workers (CDW) to refrain from political partisanship when helping the community.
Speaking during the deployment of 199 CDWs to different wards across the province, Premier Shilowa said CDW's "should leave politics to politicians" and concern themselves with becoming the "pulse of both government and the community at local level."
"Please, don't create problems. Leave politics to politicians," he told the CDWs.
The CDWs completed their learnership programme at the University of South Africa and have been deployed to 133 different wards throughout the province.
Premier Shilowa also announced that as of 01 May, the 199 CDWs were now in the full-time employ of the provincial government.
The CDW are ordinary South Africans, who work among, within and together with the communities they live in to improve the people's access to government services and information.
The CDWs' tasks are to identify people's needs, assess service delivery levels and barriers to services, do awareness and advocacy work including ensuring that residents were aware of the services available to them to improve their own lives.
Public Service Administration Minister Geraldine Frazer-Moleketi also called on the CDW's to do research about the kind of skills needed by parastatals, and then identify those skills in the community.
These, she said, will make CDWs become "career guidance teachers" helping to nurture and mentor the youth in their career paths.
"CDWs are welders of the community. They should be able to know what kind of skills are required by big parastatals and be able to identify such skills in the community," she told the graduates.
After years of doing "part time jobs", CDW James Mokemane (31) of Magagula-Zonke in Kathehong township in Ekurhuleni, says he got a new lease of life.
His first priority will be a door-to-door assessment of his Ward 25 community.
"I 've got a big office-which is the community- and the first thing I will do is make an assessment of my office (community) to find out what problems my community has. The community profile will inform how many members of the community are not registered as indigent," he said.
Mokemane grew up in a family of six, with both parents unemployed, but he will now be able to sustain his family as he will be paid a monthly salary by the provincial government.
"I grew up in a disadvantaged family. My parents never went to school. But now I have signed a contract that will make sure that my family is taken care of. They are also encouraging us to study and I will do that," he said.
Community member Makoti Susan Ntsoeleng who was helped by the CDWs hailed the workers as "a well whose water has quenched her thirst."
The next group of CDWs will start a 12-month learnership programme in July this year and will be selected from 120 wards in consultation with local authorities. They will be appointed full-time public servants in 2006. A further 130 will be appointed next year to ensure that all 446 wards in Gauteng have at least one CDW deployed there as a full-time dedicated public servant.
The training includes understanding the challenges of poverty and underdevelopment, how government works, the policy and development process, starting and managing small business, project management, conflict management, HIV and Aids and gender development.
Source: BuaNews
RELATED LINKS:
Presentation for Seminar
