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21 May 2019

Media Release: Mountain Zebra National Park’s Working for Water teams back in action

Three Working for Water (WfW) teams in Mountain Zebra National Park are hard at work since commencing operations at the beginning of May 2019. The project is made up of three teams and consists of 33 beneficiaries under the leadership of Biodiversity Social Projects’ (BSP) Project Manager, Busisiwe Xulu.

It forms part of South African National Parks’ (SANParks) implementation of Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) projects in the late 1990s when the WfW programme started in South Africa. The EPWP projects are funded by the Department of Environmental Affairs’ Natural Resource Management and Social Responsibility Programmes.

The main focus of the EPWP is to provide income relief through temporary work for the unemployed to carry out socially useful activities. Within SANParks, the programme plays a major role in terms of the social investment into neighbouring communities by national parks, while at the same time addressing some core biodiversity management and strategic infrastructure development objectives.

The WfW programme within SANParks aims to improve the integrity of natural resources. This is achieved by preventing new and emerging invasive alien plant problems, reducing the impact of existing priority invasive alien plants and enhancing capacity and commitment to solving invasive alien plant problems.

The Working for Water programme is beneficial to local communities surrounding the national parks within which they operate not only in terms of job creation. Local SMME’s and the beneficiaries are also capacitated through undergoing accredited training to enhance their skills and knowledge of their scope of work. This year’s estimated budget for running the programme in the Park is around R2 million.

One of the beneficiaries is quoted as saying, “This project helps put food on the table for my children and me. I now have knowledge and training about the environment and it has provided me with new skills and improved others I already had. I have received training in First Aid, Health and Safety and Peer Educator training. This is a wonderful opportunity for all of the people involved as it helps a lot of disadvantaged families.”

Issued By

South African National Parks (SANParks) – Frontier Region Communications

Media Enquiries

Fayroush Ludick
Regional Manager: Communications, SANParks
Tel: 082 888 0201
Email: [email protected]