KZN job-creation projects lie abandoned
8 June 2015
Note to editors: The following remarks follow an oversight visit today by the DA’s Shadow Minister of Small Business Development, Toby Chance MP, to several industrial and business parks in the City of eThekwini.
Two major job creation projects meant to support small businesses in eThekwini are lying abandoned and derelict, a DA oversight visit to the metro has found today.
Both the Jabulani Business Park in Verulam and a Mushroom-growing plant near King Shaka International have fallen out of use for years, despite 383 000 eThekwini residents being unable to find work.
First I visited the Jabulani business park in Verulam. Built in the 1980s to house and train crafters and other small black-owned businesses, it now lies abandoned and derelict. Locals say it was overrun by people escaping the outbreaks of violence before the first democratic elections in 1994 and never recovered.
It is owned by the eThekwini metro who have questions to answer: what happened to the businesses that used to occupy the site, why is it abandoned, why has the city not renovated it, and how many jobs have been lost?
A few kilometres from King Shaka International Airport is the Cottonlands township where in 2008 the eThekwini local government invested millions of rands in a mushroom growing enterprise. This was supposed to grow valuable shiitake mushrooms which are mostly imported from Japan. It too now lies abandoned.
According to local residents, the facility only operated for a year before it was closed down. It consists of a large shade-cloth covered growing shed, air-conditioned storage containers, cool rooms for processing and packing the mushrooms as well as offices and an ablution block. Judging by the state of the interiors and fittings, the facility appears to have been hardly used at all.
Business and industrial parks have the potential to create jobs and address racially based economic exclusion. The DA believes that support for small business should be at a top priority for government.
However, a long history of under-investment and neglect has left many job creation projects in a dire state.
It is inconceivable that millions of rands have been wasted on these two projects, with nothing to show except lost job opportunities. Minister Zulu cannot watch from the sidelines anymore – she must intervene.
Following my recent oversight visit to the Gauteng township industrial parks, which uncovered inexcusable government neglect and disdain for black-owned small businesses, I was hoping for a different story in KZN. Sadly, that was not the case.
I will therefore today be writing to Minister of Small Business Development, Lindiwe Zulu, requesting she investigate these two projects and take steps to bring those responsible to book. Furthermore I will be presenting this, along with the findings of further oversight visits in other provinces, to Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Small Business Development in due course.
The DA believes it is possible to ensure that more South Africans are afforded the opportunity to start and grow their own businesses. Urgent action is required, however, from government to address the many abandoned job creation projects which promise so much but deliver so little.
Statement issued by Toby Chance MP, DA Shadow Minister of Small Business Development, June 8 2015
