Beware ‘Soviet trap’ in job plan -Expanded Public Works Programme

gauteng’s provincial government could be falling into the soviet trap of creating jobs by employing one person to dig a hole in the ground and another to fill it, the democratic alliance (da) said yesterday.



the province announced last year it would spend r3,3bn on government’s expanded public works programme over the next three years.

sakkie blanche, da spokesman on the public works programme, cited examples of roads that would need to be rebuilt at added cost because they were being built inappropriately for the traffic they carried. blanche was speaking after attending a public works portfolio committee oversight visit to projects showcasing gauteng’s programme .




government announced the programme last year with the promise of countrywide job creation.


blanche said it was unwise to use manual labour to build roads that would carry heavy loads at high speeds. “although roads were built with manual labour 40 to 50 years ago, times have changed because collector (feeder) roads in those days did not carry vehicles with 10 wheels or more, and vehicles were not loaded with tons of freight or travelling at speeds that modern vehicles do.”

overloading causes serious damage to road networks in sa and neighbouring countries, and companies with toll road concessions — which risk heavy losses on their investments — have implemented special projects to combat the problem.

“(a road project at stinkwater) was started as a one-directional road, but has now stopped because it was discovered that the road will need to carry at least 30 buses in two directions and must be widened,” said blanche. “the losses incurred due to this planning error are estimated to be at least r230000.”


blanche said the da was in favour of using manual labour to build car parks, taxi ranks and non-collector roads.

politicians should not dictate that professionals bend the rules to conform with policy, he warned.

the da also accused the provincial government of trying to impress the committee by presenting numerous welfare projects, often run by nongovernmental organisations, as part of the programme.

the party recommended that r12bn be spent on the maintenance of state buildings and properties. these would create “far more sustainable jobs”.

“in spending this money the state will stop the continuous decay of its roads, buildings and other infrastructure.”

national public works ministry spokesman thami ngidi said he could not comment on technical issues, and said each municipality would have to be approached individually.