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The city last Tuesday dedicated R1.2 million to providing work packages for start-up businesses at the Discovery Recreation Centre.
The work packages were offered to small cooperatives under the Jozi@Work umbrella, a mayoral initiative aimed at tackling unemployment, poverty and inequality. The city’s 2015-2016 budget for Jozi@Work stands at a staggering R3 billion.
Hopefuls from areas like Florida, Roodepoort CBD, Bramfischerville, Constantia Kloof and even Northgate gathered at the centre where the first of a series of information sessions took place last week. City entities, including the Johannesburg Social Housing Company (Joshco), City Power and the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) made up packages which included tasks like gardening, street cleaning and maintenance.
Joshco dedicated R502 400 to small cooperatives for gardening work, half of which was for Tshedzani Flats in Roodepoort CBD and the other half for Fleurhof Flats in Fleurhof. The packages were offered and explained by Ronald Mutheiwana.
City Power’s presenter, Foster Moagi, offered R500 000 dealt up in three packages, one to weld street lights’ pole covers (R100 000), another to paint street light poles (R100 000) and the remainder to do maintenance on street lights.
In his turn, the JRA’s Lawrence Maseko offered R194 531 for small cooperatives to do vegetation control along some of the roads in Ward 70 (R113 437), Ward 84 (R21 468) and Ward 85 (R59 625), bringing the city’s total dedicated budget for these eight packages to R1 196 931. Work under the JRA will include skoffelling, chemical spray and street sweeping.
Yolande Janse van Rensburg, assistant director of Region C’s Citizen Relationship and Urban Management (Crum) reiterated to attendees the importance of completing the expression of interest forms correctly.
“Furnish us with every relevant piece of information, including your full names, contact details and the work package you are interested in,” she was quoted saying.
“Work packages are not tenders, but meant to be accessed by start-up businesses.”
The Capability Support Agency (CSA) assists successful applicants to ensure the cooperative has all the required tools to complete their assigned tasks.
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