Chair:
Ms Shirin Motala: Senior Research Manager, Economic Performance and Development Unit, HSRC
Presenters:
Dr A. McCord: Research Associate at the Overseas Development Institute, UK
Dr Kate Philip: Senior Technical Adviser to GTAC in National Treasury
Mr Stewart Ngandu: Research Manager, Economic Performance and Development Unit, HSRC
Representative of : EPWP Directorate, Department of Public Works
Date: 7 June 2016
Time: 12:00 – 16:00
Venues: Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town
Presentations available for download below:
For more information regarding the policy brief entitled “Rewarding participants in public work prgrammes: Cash or food transfers” which was circulated during the seminar click here.
Public employment programmes (PEP’s) have been popularly implemented in many developing countries as a key social protection policy instrument to address unacceptably high levels of poverty and inequality. It is driven by the notion that economically active adults must expend labour as a minimum condition for accessing a wage.
Historically PEP’s have been used to create public infrastructure assets addressing backlogs and deficits. South Africa has been among the pioneering nations in innovating a suite of “useful work” activities undertaken as part of PEPS to include the delivery of assets created in respect of natural resource management (NRM) and social and community services which are thought to promote current and future livelihoods benefits.
Despite the growing fiscal spending on PWPs there has been little assessment of the livelihoods impact of the forms of wage transfers, the creation of assets and the delivery of social services in the medium term. This evidence gap impacts our ability to assess the effectiveness of PWPs towards informing their design and implementation.
The seminar will present evidence from an ODI study on the challenges of assessing the livelihood impacts of NRM related assets created in Kenya and Ethiopia, share experiences from SA’s Community Work Programme, provide insights into how EPWP Phase 3 will measure the impact of EPWP work in “providing or enhancing public goods or community services” and present a policy brief reviewing the efficacy of “in kind wage transfers” from an EPWP impact assessment study of EPWP Phase 2 in KwaZulu-Natal.
A copy of the policy brief will be distributed at the seminar as well as electronically
The HSRC seminar series is funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The views and opinions expressed therein as well as findings and statements of the seminar series do not necessarily represent the views of DST.
Kindly RSVP by 5 June 2016
Cape Town : HSRC, 12th Floor, Plein Park Building (Opposite Revenue Office), Plein Street, Cape Town. Contact Carmen August ,Tel (021) 4668004, Fax (021) 461 0299 or e-mail: caugust@hsrc.ac.za
Durban : The Atrium, 5th Floor, 430 Peter Mokaba Ridge, Berea, 4001 , Contact Ridhwaan Khan, Tel (031) 242 5400, cell: 083 788 2786 or RKhan@hsrc.ac.za , or Hlengiwe Zulu at e-mail HZulu@hsrc.ac.za
Pretoria : HSRC Video Conference, 1st floor HSRC Library Human Sciences Research Council, 134 Pretorius Street, Pretoria. Arlene Grossberg, Tel: (012) 302 2811, e-mail: acgrossberg@hsrc.ac.za