ANC meets with EPWP workers to promise government jobs

9 March 2017

The DA has learnt that ANC leadership in EThekwini is today holding a mass meeting with Expanded Public Works Program (EPWP) workers at the Durban ICC.

There is no conceivable reason for a political party to hold a meeting with EPWP workers, who are employed in a government program, not an ANC program.

We know it is an ANC meeting, because upon trying to attend, a DA councillor was forced to leave by Mayor Gumede herself. We have also learnt that the Mayor opened the event by telling those present that no one should either discuss or send pictures of the meeting to the DA.

We are certain that ANC councillors are in full attendance as ANC councillors today bunked their duties to the City, and attended no committee meetings, to rather go to this EPWP meeting.

The DA has long stood firm against ANC use of the EPWP programme for political purposes. It is a jobs and skills program, paid for with public money, not an ANC election campaign tool.

Today’s meeting confirms this, as our information is that Mayor Gumede allegedly promised all EPWP workers present full-time jobs within the city, saying that all contracts would be renewed until they become permanent. This is a gross undermining of recruitment laws and procedures, and is an unlawful promise for any Mayor to make unilaterally.

This also means that new job seekers cannot enter the EPWP program, for a fair chance at this lifeline to temporary work. The Mayor is today keeping hundreds of thousands of people out of work through the EPWP program.

Gumede apparently went so far as to say that her own office would manage the database and appointments in this regard, putting her at the centre of dishing out jobs.

The DA supports the EPWP program unequivocally, and where the DA governs we roll out the EPWP program to the most beneficiaries and paying far above the prescribed rates. But we will not stand for the program being used through ANC meetings to score political points.

Across South Africa the DA has rejected ANC abuse of the EPWP program, first to allocate jobs only to ANC card-carrying members, and now to bribe people with the hope of jobs, at an ANC meeting.

The DA will demand that this event be probed by the City’s Ethics and Rules committees, and we will refer this distortion of the EPWP program to the National Minister of Public Works for investigation.

Issued by Zwakele Mncwango, DA KZN Leader, 9 March 2017