 Last week, South Africa celebrated the fourth annual National Construction Week in recognition of the construction industry's contribution to economic growth, social development and human resource development.
"The construction of Rea Vaya has undoubtedly made a significant contribution in terms of economic stimulation, creating numerous jobs for local community members, who are working tirelessly with us to build a better City and an improved public transport system for our people," says Rehana Moosajee, the City's MMC for Transportation.
To date, the City of Johannesburg has invested about R3.2 billion in the Rea Vaya network.
"In this financial year, Rea Vaya has created more than 3000 construction jobs. These jobs are in addition to the employment opportunities created for contractors and their own permanent staff to build the infrastructure.
"The City's Community Development Office maintains a database of local labour and skills and this was made available to the principal contractors for recruitment purposes. Utilizing this database, community members were recruited for jobs such as kerbing, drainage, paving and building the BRT stations,” she explains.
Furthermore, Bophelong Construction, the contractor responsible for the BRT construction in Ellis Park, Edith Cavell and Joubert Park, has invested in training unemployed people as heavy machine operators. The majority of the learners in the training programme were women!
Gertrude Malesa, one of the women who qualified as a machine operator and also holds a qualification in Building and Civil Engineering, says: "The BRT project has so far provided much-needed job and skills development opportunities in the local community – both for men and women. Prior to the Rea Vaya project I was unemployed for nearly three years. Now, I have additional skills – operating a back-loader to load trucks, excavate and demolish – and I'm gainfully employed.
Construction of unique assets for the City
Already part of the City landscape are the unique Rea Vaya stations and dedicated bus lanes constructed for Phase 1A of the system. While the prototype station at Joubert Park was built from the ground up, the other stations were constructed off-site in an innovative modular form and assembled on-site. A basic station has features such as ticket machines, pedestrian crosswalks and overpasses for commuters to get to the stations, weather cover, real-time information displays, and a platform providing a wheelchair-friendly interface. Larger stations also have drop-off zones, bicycle parking zones, metered taxi ranks and information kiosks.
Dedicated bus lanes were also constructed to ensure that Rea Vaya runs on time, all the time. The BRT lanes are clearly distinguishable from other lanes, such as bus lanes or mixed traffic lanes, by special road markings. |
