Infrastructure and Connectivity

National Emergency Employment Program - Phase I

Our Goal

The Project Objective was the nation-wide quality rehabilitation, reconstruction and maintenance of essential rural access infrastructure using appropriate labor-based approaches, thereby creating short-term opportunities for the rural poor.

How We Deliver

The National Emergency Employment Program aimed to assist the government in providing employment in rural areas at a minimum wage, as a safety net, to as many people in as short a time as possible.

The activity was linked into another ARTF project, the National Rural Access program, which provided the need for labor-intensive road sector development. Subprojects were carried out in the road sector using the services of: (a) a team of management experts to help launch the activities and support their overall management; and (b) a core team of locally recruited road engineers in each province to assist with: (i) the design and costing of subproject proposals; (ii) providing technical support to villagers and small contractors carrying out the subprojects; (iii) supervising the works; (iv) making payments; and (v) managing and controlling expenditures. Until the project’ restructuring in 2004, Sub-grants were made available to beneficiaries for carrying out subprojects in the irrigation sector using services parallel to those above.

PROJECT RESULTS

3,173 Km of roads rehabilitated;
15,000 ha of irrigated area benifited from repairs and desilting;
19,090 m of structure length;
5,256,874 days of unskilled labour generated.