unday Times reports that the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) has blown R221m in three months training 14,771 people who were already in jobs.

The project, part of a broader scheme to create jobs which sources in the UIF labelled a “free for all”, was the subject of an internal audit report, which has since found that it was not properly advertised to allow companies to participate in a fair manner. The 14,771 workers in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) were trained to cook and provide basic meals for pupils in KZN schools who benefit from the School Nutrition Programme. The school food handlers were employed on 24-month contracts months before their training even began. According to the KZN education department, their contracts funded through a conditional grant from the national department of basic education will expire soon. The UIF paid R344m to a company called Fuze Institute for Humanitarian and Development Praxis to train the workers aged between 20 and 64. Of that money, Fuze spent R22m on overalls, hats, aprons and masks; R17m for unspecified “tools of trade”; and a stipend of R1,050 a month for three months for the workers. In addition, Fuze earned a R24m project-management fee and charged R14.7m for “support” and checking whether the food handlers were going to work. The training project is part of a programme called Employability Initiatives for the Unemployed, which falls under the UIF’s Labour Activation Programmes (LAP) that the UIF committed R2.7bn to in the hopes of creating 65,669 permanent jobs. So far, R685m has been spent on six projects meant to employ 27,781 people with little real permanent employment created — but hundreds of millions of rand has been paid to training providers.

• Read the full original of the detailed report in the above regard by Sabelo Skiti at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)

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