Staff and officials of the Joburg City Council’s Region E and the Joburg Development Agency (JDA) ended a public meeting prematurely when disgruntled Alex residents and small business operators threatened to force the officials away due to failed promises on economic empowerment.
Residents and operators urged the officials to bring along their seniors to atone for the past broken promises, failing which they would conduct marches to the regional office or protest at all future meetings the office would hold in Alex.
The meeting at San Kopano Community Centre on 18 March was convened for the development agency to inform the operators of work opportunities as subcontractors to large established companies on projects in the area. The work included paving, services upgrades, roads upgrades, sidewalk construction, earthworks and landscaping for the BRT, maintenance of parks and the Grayston Pedestrian Bridge, where work resumed recently after it collapsed last year resulting in deaths.
The operators and residents said they were tired of false promises and dubious claims by the City to empower them financially through participation in local development projects and programmes. This in fulfilment of government’s commitment to ring fence 30 percent of all programmes and projects’ funding for the local companies including cooperatives the region encouraged them to form. The operators gave a count of 34 local projects they alleged were contracted to companies from outside the region or to established companies contrary to the development agency’s claim that they were done by local contractors. The JDA also alleged that this involved work by local companies which proved technical competency.
The residents and operators alleged that the contractors only involved them in menial work such as cleaning graves and cutting grass which had minimal financial gains.
This they said was not financial empowerment as most of the money paid to them was also deducted to pay back unspecified surcharges for the large companies, leaving them in crippling debt to their creditors.
They claimed that this gave them no opportunity to grow and develop for skills transfer and improvement of rating for them to bid for bigger projects and no support to access credit to support their bids for the work.
The local residents and small business operators urged for unity in the face of likely accusations of creating anarchy by some in government. They said their protest emulated their counterparts in Soweto who drove away service providers from elsewhere who were engaged through labour-broking and fronting at their expense.
Ephraim Pooe of Region E said their concerns were noted and would be addressed through ongoing workshops.
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