THE metro hopes to create about 180 000 jobs over the next five years through various means including SMME development and labour intensive projects

THE Executive Mayor of Ekurhuleni Mondli Gungubele has declared that his municipality is targeting the creation of almost 180 000 jobs in the next five years – in direct response to President Jacob Zuma’s call for job creation.

Speaking at the first council meeting of the municipality since the local government elections in May, Gungubele told the meeting that the municipality has decided to tweak internal systems to enable for this to happen.

“Other than that we have also decided consciously to submit applications for all available job creation opportunities as announced by both the provincial and national governments, because we realise that on our own we can only do so much.”

“At a systems level, our investigations show that a targeted procurement policy has potential to help increase the number of jobs that in particular SMMEs could make, thereby increasing our contribution to the national target for job creation. We have asked our departments to come up with concrete proposals in this regard, which we will table at the next council meeting soon,“ Gungubele explained.

“On CAPEX, our analysis reveals that we should be able to create at least 28 000 full-time jobs over the next five years, supposing our CAPEX allocation remains constant. If, however, our CAPEX allocation increases – as we expect it will – this number is bound to be much higher.

“We have also given the directive that the City of Ekurhuleni should submit applications to every job creation fund or initiative along the lines announced by provincial and national government, as long as we qualify. To this end, an application has been submitted to the Jobs Fund for projects in excess of R2.3 billion.

If our application is successful – and we have no reason to think it won’t be – it will add to the number of jobs we hope to create by a further 147 000 part-time equivalent jobs,” he pointed out confidently.

Giving examples of the part-time equivalent jobs the Ekurhuleni hopes to create, Gungubele pointed out that such will come from construction and performance arts at the R140 million O.R. Tambo Cultural Precinct; environment management especially in the area of illegal dumping, maintenance of closed landfills, grass cutting, rehabilitation of wetlands and refuse removal in informal settlements; and the construction of the Daveyton CBD transport facility.

A whopping 140 000 jobs will come from the maintenance of surfaced roads and the patching of potholes, while 2000 are expected from the construction and upgrading of stormwater infrastructure in the region.

“I can clearly pronounce that we have done our homework and we are confident that our plans will go a long to benefitting the people of Ekurhuleni in terms of job creation and the alleviation of poverty, but also in terms of improving the standard of living of our communities and the infrastructure of our city.

We have lined up a variety of initiatives to ensure we answer the national call for job creation. In addition to these jobs, which we intend creating through CAPEX, targeted and other forms of procurement, as well as funds sourced from the Jobs Fund, we are also intending to make effective use of our flagship projects in a manner that they are job-intensive,” Gungubele said.

Some of the flagship projects expected to create jobs are the development of the Digital City which is expected to create in the region of 3000 jobs, introduction of the Integrated Rapid Public Transport Network which should yield no less than 600 jobs, the Rehabilitation of Lakes and Dams and the Local Economic Development and Township Economies project, among others.

Source: www.ekurhuleni.gov.za