• Increasing the labour intensity of government-funded projects;
• Creating work opportunities in public environmental programmes;
• Developing small businesses and cooperatives, including utilizing general government expenditure
on goods and services to provide the work experience component of small enterprise learnership
/ incubation programmes; and
• Creating work opportunities in public social programmes.
Phase I of the programme, in the First Report, was launched in May 2004 and the target was the creation on one
million job opportunities, and this was exceeded with the creation of 1, 4 million job opportunities.
Government launched Phase II of the programme in April 2009. The goal of EPWP II is to create 2 million Full-Time
Equivalent (FTE) jobs for the poor and unemployed through the delivery of public and community services. This will
scale up from 210 000 FTE jobs in 2009 /10 to 610 000 FTE jobs in 2013 /14. This translates to 4, 5 million (short
and ongoing) work opportunities. The most distinctive feature is the introduction of a fiscal incentive to support
infrastructure projects funded by provinces and municipalities to create additional work opportunities.
This phase saw the launching and piloting of the Community Works Programme (CWP) in 3 districts and 10 villages
in the Alfred Nzo Municipality, in the Eastern Cape. Between April and December 2009, 482 742 work opportunities
were created. In order to facilitate the implementation of Phase II, protocol agreements with clear targets for each
province and municipality, clarifying their contributions towards the attainment of the target have been signed with
all Premiers and Mayors.
The CWP is an inter-departmental partnership programme aimed at creating employment through social
development projects. These partners are tasked with contributing to increasing forms of public works, special
employment programmes or publicly funded employment. The CWP offers regular work of at least two days a
week or eight days a month to individuals based on a developmental approach of identifying work opportunities
at community level. These work opportunities range from activities such as home-based care, food gardens,
environmental services and the creation and maintenance of community assets such as parks, schools, clinics,
churches, roads and water pipelines.
The success of the CWP lies in the ward communities and local development forums identifying constructive work
opportunities, which ensures alignment with local government’s Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). Furthermore,
65 percent of funding is allocated to wages and is thus a cost-effective and labour-intensive method of job creation.
Since the adoption of the Framework for South Africa’s Response to the Global Economic Crisis in February 2009,
the following has been achieved: (i) the launch of about 20 actions to address the crisis, from efforts to respond
to communities in distress, vulnerable workers and troubled enterprises and sectors; (ii) the launching of a fund
for enterprises in distress, and to this effect; the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) allocated R6.1 billion
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