Johnathan Paoli
THE MMC for finance and EFF Gauteng Chairperson, Nkululeko Dunga has expressed his confidence in the governing of the Metro, but said he remained concerned over the ANC Mayor Nkosindiphile Xhakaza’s drive for job creation as an attempt at garnering electoral support, with little results.
Dunga, in an exclusive interview with Inside Politics, confirmed that the metro remained focused and confident in the fiscal initiative aimed at recovering costs and other revenue enhancement schemes, despite worries about the effectiveness of employment initiatives.
The MMC said despite interacting with the Mayor on the jobs creation initiative, a concern remained that previously the Treasury had spent too much money on these programmes.
He criticised the Expanded Public Work Programme (EPWP), and described it as a “glorified approach of trying to do something, when you’re actually not doing something.”
The MMC said that the EPWP did not offer benefits; but was rather temporary and not permanent, and could end at any given time.
“You rely on national grants which are limited to six months. What is the joy of someone benefiting something through the EPWP now knowing very well it ends in six months and after that six months you don’t know if you have an opportunity to form it again?” he said.
The MMC said the EPWP should be done away with, even if it meant that the National Treasury guidelines be taken down in order to allow for the employment of more people.
“We need to in-source. We need to in-source a lot of the services that the city renders, because those are continuous services, and not just things that are temporal,” Dunga said.
Dunga’s comments come after Xhakaza’s State of the City Address in Germiston earlier in the week, in which he highlighted and praised the ANC’s recent initiatives at providing employment for the citizens of the metro.
However, Dunga is not impressed by what Xhakaza claims are ANC successes in creating employment.
“As to whether it equates to the economic activity of our people, it does not. We still rank the highest, even above provincial and national projections in terms of the unemployment rate of the city of Ekurhuleni. Our people are not stupid, they are very well aware that this is just a temporary engagement for political expediency purposes,” he said.
Dunga said his party was not oblivious to the high levels of unemployment in the metro but advocated for quality and sustainable jobs, something which the government programmes do not offer at the moment.
INSIDE METROS
