Headway in empowerment of youth contractors � Gov�t
Pauline Dikuelo | Thursday June 1, 2017 16:07
The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Infrastructure and Housing Development, Dikagiso Mokotedi said this before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) this week.
He said the policy was built on good foundation, regarding the initiative targeted the youth to be awarded 15% of all contracts.
The CEE, which is currently undergoing scrutiny from the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Board (PPADB), was introduced to help citizens participate actively in strategic socio-economic decisions.
Earlier this year PPADB noted that they would soon engage a consultancy to evaluate the effectiveness of the policy, which is expected to be completed during the 2017/18 financial year with recommendations to make empowerment through procurement more effective.
“The reservation policy was built on a good foundation and has made a significant progress amongst the youth as most of them have already benefited,” he said.
Mokotedi said the policy does not only limit the youth contractors to participate in the large tenders, as already there are some who are already competing with large companies.
“We are doing our best to engage the youth as during the past financial year government spent about P847,000 training about 50 youth through the Youth Vocational Training programme,” he said.
According to Mokotedi, through the programme they invited everybody who has shown interest in the construction sector, talked to them and enquired about their interests, following which he said would then place them in different posts across the ministry.
Further he said about P72 million of the contracts that were awarded during the first phase of the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP) was awarded to 21 youth companies.
Mokotedi also noted that there are some projects under ESP which have been awarded and still going through the evaluation process which includes the construction of houses for the Ministry of Health and Wellness as well as the Ministry of Agricultural Development and Food Security.
According to Mokotedi, the biggest challenge that delayed was shortage of land.
“The biggest challenge that hindered the progress of these projects was lack of land as for example, initially the Ministry of Health though they indicated they had the land which later emerged that the ministry no longer own the land,” he said.