Durban — Thousands of jobs are expected to be created over a four-year period once work on the N3/N2/EB Cloete Interchange gets under way.
The SA National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral) has awarded a R4 billion contract for the upgrading of the interchange in Durban. The date of commencing the upgrade had not been given.
eThekwini Municipality ward 30 councillor Warren Burne said a Sanral technical team gave a presentation on the nature of the upgrade, and representatives of the Department of Employment and Labour (DEL) gave a presentation on how the labour database would be compiled.
Burne said it would be a great way to create job opportunities. He said the general workers would be sourced from the wards within 5km of the project site, which extends about 8,5km up and down the N2 and the N3 on either side of the interchange, popularly known as “Spaghetti Junction”. The DEL would be holding community engagements in the respective wards to enable work seekers to register for inclusion in the database.
Burne said the department expected to spend about R350 million on local labour over the contract period. “Some of the general workers will only work for parts of the project and therefore there won’t be a fixed number of full-time employment. This upgrade is expected to last four-and-a-half years.”
He suggested that work seekers ensure that they get their name on the DEL’s database for ward 30 as soon as possible, either online or by visiting the DEL’s offices. Alternatively, they could await the DEL community engagement in ward 30.
In a statement, Sanral said the N2/ N3 corridor upgrade was their flagship project and was expected to take between eight to 10 years to complete. They expect to create up to 15 000 job opportunities.
The upgrade of the N2 will focus on a 55km length of road from Lovu River on the South Coast to Umdloti on the North Coast. The N3 upgrade will focus on an 80km section from Durban to Pietermaritzburg. These upgrades will include the widening of the N2 and N3 carriageways, with four or five lanes in each direction, and the reconfiguration of most major interchanges.
This contract follows Sanral’s recent plans of investing R17bn into eThekwini projects that will enable job creation as well as cater to people with disabilities.
“While Sanral maintains national roads, we make sure that the members of the community are given business opportunities to be part of the road infrastructure development and benefit from it. Over and above the main contractors, we also ensure that sub-contractors are selected from the local area,” said Trevor Zumani, Sanral’s Eastern Region Project Manager.
Sanral recently hosted an information session for the people living with disabilities in the eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality.
“A lot of SMMEs need training in running and managing their businesses. Sanral will offer training from filling out a tender document to managing their finances once the business is up and running. On completion of the 15-day training, SMMEs can effectively ... bid for subcontracting opportunities on the construction projects,” said Eastern Region Transformation Officer James Takalo.
In a similar project, Sanral launched a R270m upgrade of the R23 in Mpumalanga that led to the creation of over 270 jobs; which started in 2021 and is due to be completed in April.
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