Employment sustainability of the Expanded Public Works Programme in the Greater Giyani Municipality of the Limpopo Province

Abstract

The research report gives a critical review of the factors that contributed to the nonsustainability of the employment of the beneficiaries of the Expanded Public Works Programme in the Limpopo Province of South Africa with special focus on the Greater Giyani Municipality. The main problem as identified by the researcher is that a large majority of former Expanded Public Works Programme beneficiaries end up being unemployed despite the fact that the government spent money on skills training for them in an effort to equip them with skills so that they can be employable in other sectors of the economy when they exit the programme. The report clarifies the factors that contributed to the beneficiaries not managing to get new employment after exiting the programme. The report also clarifies the roles played by the different stakeholders in the implementation of the programme and this assists in clarifying the origin of the problems that led to the failures of the programme. From the research done the researcher found that skills’ training has not been done in most projects and also that where training was done the skills training was for none accredited courses which were not equipping the beneficiaries to be employable in the job market. The key words in the research are Expanded Public Works Programme, Employability, and Skills training.