With the rate of unemployment being very high in South Africa, 44-year-old Phineus Mampuru is grateful about the fact that he has at least been employed as a street cleaner by the City of Tshwane’s Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP).
Mampuru is a resident of Ward 38 in Mamelodi West and told Tshwane Talks that he started working in the EPWP on 1 September 2024.
He said as he was unemployed for a period of 6 years he decided to apply for the EPWP and fortunately he was hired.
He has been applying for several jobs at different places without any success but is now grateful that the EPWP has come to his rescue and he can now put food on the table for his wife and three children.
All along he has been surviving by selling snacks, cigarettes and sweets at a stall he had established next to his yard.
But Mampuru said he hasn’t abandoned his business because every day after knocking off from his EPWP duties at 3 pm he goes home to open his stall and continues to sell his items as usual.
He said his duties as an EPWP worker is to clean up dirt at illegal dumping sites as well as cleaning up filth in the streets and at shopping malls in Mamelodi.
Tshwane Talks found Mampuru sweeping outside the premises of Denlyn Mall in Mamelodi West and he explained that though there are people who have been employed to clean dirt at the mall, those people concentrate only in the interior of the mall and don’t care about the dirt outside the mall.
“Now seeing that the area outside the Denlyn Mall is filthy, I decided to clean it up,” said Mampuru.
He said through the salary that he gets from working in the EPWP he can support his family and also pay for transport to take his children to school.
He expressed a wish that the EPWP would continue for a longer time and absorb them on a permanent basis so that they can clean up the township of Mamelodi.
He pointed out that the township of Mamelodi is very dirty but that they as EPWP workers are trying to make it a bit clean.
To those folks who are currently unemployed and are very choosy about the type of work that they would like to do, Mampuru said the following:
“Never be choosy about the type of job that you must be employed in because sometimes a lowly job like sweeping dirt in the streets may in the long run result in one getting a decent job.”