Assessment of Lesotho contractors development programmes

Abstract: Unemployment and abject poverty in Lesotho are widespread, persistent and disproportionately high. Employment-intensive means of infrastructure delivery have been successfully implemented in several sub-Saharan African countries and elsewhere to generate employment and reduce poverty. It should be possible to replicate similar large-scale national programmes in Lesotho. But Lesotho has failed. Several employment-intensive programmes have been implemented in Lesotho with poor results. Despite government‘s commitment to local contractor empowerment, there have been reports of poor performance by citizen contractors. This research project describes and evaluates three of the programmes: the Labour Intensive Road Maintenance Programme, current Intensive labour based dam construction (Metolong Dam) and current intensive labour based urban upgrading. The programmes have been described and evaluated in relation to their internal objectives as well as against international literature on labour intensive work in order to determine whether or not they were successful. The study reveals that the Labour intensive road maintenance was a highly successful programme as it achieved most of its key objectives and was in conformity with international literature. The programme created jobs for a significant number of poor Basotho through the maintenance of high quality and low cost roads. It developed and established road construction and maintenance units called Lesotho construction unit (LCU) within the District. It has successfully developed and demonstrated through a Pilot Project a model for the use of labour based small contractors, managed by a LCU, for routine road maintenance. The rest of the programmes were plagued by inefficiencies resulting from poor initial planning, lack of training and technical supervisory personnel, lack of proper organisational systems for the programmes. Lesotho experience has shown that labour intensive methods could be successful if attention were paid to initial design and planning, training of technical supervisory staff and the establishment of proper organisational systems. Again conclusion reached was that the success of employment-intensive infrastructure development programmes depends to a large extent on fundamental factors such as appropriate and implementable policy, government commitment, adequate and sustainable funding, adequate capacity and good preparation. Specifically, the dissertation demonstrated that prior to implementation a sufficient timeframe is required for programme preparation in order to make significant contribution towards poverty reduction.M.Tech. (Construction Management