Transport - a catalyst for socio-economic growth and development opportunities to improve quality of life

Abstract

One of the main objectives of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) is to create jobs in order to address poverty alleviation. It is a well-known fact that road works provide good opportunity for labour-intensive activities. However, rather large and ambitious road projects are often selected, with resulting technical and specification barriers. In an effort to accommodate unskilled labour from rural communities, projects are often unbundled to the point where the project management costs start to increase exponentially and the result is that less money reaches the poor and affected communities. A philosophical approach is sketched where community facilities, schools, community centres, clinics, etc. are used as the focal point for the provision of such appropriate facilities for labour-intensive work like cycleways and footpaths. In this way road safety, accessibility and need for job creation can be ?triangulated? to provide low cost facilities for cyclists and pedestrians alike. Various person and Small Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) friendly construction techniques, which make maximum use of local materials, low skill level labour and people friendly technologies, have been developed for road construction and are well published. These technologies are discussed for lower entry barriers and made more applicable for community based construction of footpaths and cycleways. The end result is low cost appropriate technology applications for the improvement of accessibility and mobility needs of previously disadvantaged rural communities and creating sustainable jobs in the process.