le Lesotho
Urban upgrading
Maseru City Council (MCC) is the local government body responsible for a
range of services within the Municipal Area boundary including providing
economic and social assistance to the people living in the city. To improve its
capacity to properly address the expanding and already grave challenge of urban
unemployment, Maseru City Council decided to adopt an approach involving
communities and using labour-based methods in urban upgrading schemes for the
delivery of its services. Although labour-based methods are well known in
Lesotho, due to challenges in capacity utilization and implementation, the MCC
sought assistance to enhance the effectiveness of its operations. The Maseru
City Council implemented the labour-based project 2000 – 2002 to:
- support the establishment of the Labour-Based Unit (LBU) within MCC and;
- capacitate local staff of the Council to run the Unit after the termination
of the project.
The United Nations Development Programme/United Nations Volunteers (UNDP/UNV)
and the ILO provided technical assistance, while the Japanese Government
provided grant funding.
Under the project mechanisms enabling community involvement in service
delivery right from planning through to implementation were developed. The
process starts with a participatory community need assessment followed by an
identification and planning stage, design, prioritization and finally
implementation. Through this process the communities take on more responsibility
in operation and maintenance, and in monitoring and evaluation. The resulting
projects formulated are based on prioritised needs and focus on community/labour-based
approaches for implementation. The process ensures ownership and sustainability.
The long-term impacts on the poverty levels in Maseru are yet to be assessed.
However, during the project a total of about 26,000 worker days were generated
through labour-based approaches within the city of Maseru. Women provided almost
half, i.e. 12,730 worker days of the labour. Eleven stretches of roads, totaling
30km were upgraded using the labour-based approach.
While a labour-based method of construction of infrastructure such as road
etc. normally gives immediate but temporary employment, the orientation and mode
of operation of the solid waste management scheme provides an avenue for
creation of permanent self-employment. This approach has been applied in Maseru
and so far a total of about 171 persons have been engaged in collection and
disposal of solid waste within Maseru. In addition, through the community based
approach income generating groups have been formed in various constituents in
Maseru.
Labour-based roadworks
The mining industry retrenchment policy resulted in a rapid increase in
unemployment in the seventies. To address this problem of unemployment the
Labour Construction Unit (LCU) of the Ministry of Works was established in 1977,
to promote the efficient use of labour-based methods and to create alternative
employment opportunities for migrant workers returning from South Africa. The
ILO was involved in the establishment by providing technical assistance. The
Unit was expanded and was fully institutionalized within the Ministry in 1988.
This was in line with the Governments policy to promote the extensive use of
labour-based methods of work. It later became a fully fledge department,
Department for Rural Roads (DRR), within the Ministry of Works. The DRR is
responsible for a significant portion of the country’s gazetted road network
– upgrading, rehabilitating and maintaining a road network of 2500 km using
labour-based methods. DRR is also involved in more complex community projects
funded under the Lesotho Fund for Community Development.
Labour-based contractor development
A World Bank-financed project to develop a cadre of small-scale contractors,
capable of carrying out labour-based road maintenance works on the gravel road
network, was launched in 1993. During the project period, 32 domestic
contractors were trained in technical and managerial aspects of running a road
maintenance enterprise. ILO provided technical assistance with the Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) funding. During the project,
a set of training material was written for the specific needs of labour-based
road maintenance contractors. This material referred to as, Road Maintenance and
Rehabilitation (ROMAR), was based on the ILO Improve Your Construction Business
methodology and is now widely used in the region and beyond.
Road Rehabilitation and Maintenance project
In 1997 a large-scale project, the Road Rehabilitation and Maintenance
Project (RRMP) to improve the road network, build capacity and restructure the
Ministry of Works was initiated. The project, funded through the Government of
Lesotho, IDA, the European Union (EU), Irish Aid and Kreditanstalt fur
Wiederaufbau (KfW), trained local labour-based contractors to expand their
skills and work opportunities to include construction and up-grading activities
using labour-based methods.
In April 1997 ILO ceased its direct technical assistance involvement in
Lesotho, but continued through a Sida and IDA funded agreement with the
Government of Lesotho to provide inputs into the development of curriculum,
training materials, and implementation plans for contractor construction and
upgrading training. Training material was developed based on the experience and
courses conducted referred to as Road Construction and Upgrading (ROCAU). The
training material includes guidelines on the planning, organization and
implementing of training programmes for small-scale contractors as well as a
trainig manual with the actual material to be used for classroom training.
Lire
- Final Evaluation of Project LES/00/V01
2003.
- Community involvement in labour-based
urban upgrading, experiences from Maseru, Lesotho
M. Kasure and T. Stenstrom. A paper presented at the 10th
Regional Seminar for Labour-based Practitioners, Arusha, Tanzania, October 2004.
ILO/ASIST.
- Road construction and upgrading (ROCAU) – Training guidelines;
Training manual and Overhead slides
Labour Construction Unit (LCU), Lesotho, 1999.
- Road maintenance and regravelling (ROMAR)
using labour-based methods – Handbook and workbook
Andersson, C and Beusch, A., IT Pubs., 1997.
- Improve your construction business series:
Pricing and
bidding: Handbook and workbook; Site management: Handbook and workbook; Business
management: Handbook and workbook
Andersson, C et al. ILO.
- Transformation of the Labour Construction Unit from an
executing to contract supervisory agency
In ILO/MART Development of small-scale
contracing workshop, Harare, 27th November – 1st December 1995 report. AT.
Lehobo, ILO/ASIST, Harare, 1995.
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