Wednesday, April 17, 2024
President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to officiate over the celebration of 20 years of the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) in the Eastern Cape, on Wednesday.
The President will also launch Phase V of the programme.
“The EPWP is a nationwide government programme to create work opportunities and income support to poor and unemployed people through the delivery of public and community assets and services, thereby contributing towards development.
“The programme is one of government’s flagship Public Employment Programmes and has been implemented for the past 20 years since April 2004,” the Presidency said in a statement.
The programme is implemented in the following sectors:
- Infrastructure sector and the non-state sector coordinated by the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure
- Social sector coordinated by the Department of Social Development
- Environment and culture sector coordinated by Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment
According to the Presidency, since the EPWP’s inception, some 14 million working opportunities have been created through “more than 300 public bodies and non-profit organisations (NPO) implementing the EPWP”.
“The work opportunities were created in sectors such as road construction, road maintenance, construction of schools and clinics, provision of early childhood development services, environmental greening and clean-up projects, fire projects and removal of alien vegetation projects.
“These also include training and skilling in construction skills in painting, brick laying, carpentry; home community care skills and firefighting.
“The launch of the Phase V implemented from 01 April 2024 to 31 March 2029 will be used to unveil millions of more work opportunities to benefit women, youth and poor households for inclusive growth, sustainable development, and community empowerment in the country,” the Presidency said. – SAnews.gov.za
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Twinkle Cutlass
Saudi Arabia: You have two cows. Because they are not allowed to be around bulls.
Alpha
The Man who could only Drink Milk
I know an old man who had lived a life full of adventure, but his health started to catch up with him. He\’d run the Boston Marathon, was an avid surfer, and climbed Everest, but he\’d started to have abdominal pains around his 85th birthday and went to see a doctor. Sadly, he ultimately was diagnosed with a rare degenerative liver disease that slowly made him allergic to everything he ate.
He kept copious notes, and as an avid gastronomist slowly grew to despair as everything he\’d spent his life enjoying became something he could no longer eat. Alcohol went first, then mushrooms, then bread, then root vegetables, then coffee, one at a time he had to remove them from his diet. The doctor was clear: if he kept eating something his liver rejected the autoimmune response would be quick and severe, and would lead to a painful death. Little by little, everything was taken away as an option, until the only thing that remained was milk.
In some ways, this actually made life easier, because the mental strain of remembering what he could and couldn\’t eat was gone, but then so was the joy in variety. But he took it in stride, and got his own cow and took classes from a farmer to learn everything he could about the only thing that could give him sustenance. And even within milk, he could still have yogurt, butter, cream, some cheeses, and other milk-derived products he hadn\’t fully rejected yet, so it wasn\’t all bad. But then one day a few months later he felt the pain again, and he knew cow\’s milk was no longer an option.
Lacking other options, he tried goat\’s milk, and he was delighted that it worked! The protein structure is just different enough that his body still tolerated it. That bought him another month. And that\’s when we came up with a wonderful plan to go on one last grand adventure around the world. If he could get one month of life out of the milk of every mammal, he\’d actually have a few more years to enjoy life to the fullest and see the world in all its beauty. Each month, we\’d pick a place with a new mammal, and he would immerse himself fully with the locals, learn all the ways to prepare the milk, and just enjoy the hand he had been dealt as much as he could.
We milked sheep in New Zealand. Camels in Egypt. Zebras in South Africa. Giant bats in Indonesia. Do you know how many Peruvian cuy you need to milk to get a single glass? I do. Even as his health slowly faded, he stayed cheerful, and I felt lucky to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. That brings us to today when he got to the very end of his spreadsheet, and declared that he was now allergic to every mammal. He\’d enjoyed his journey, but his time had come to an end, for there was nothing left to milk.
To which I said nonsense, I bet we can milk a few thousand karma out of this post.