Durban - The South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) has encouraged businesswomen in King Cetshwayo District Municipality in northern KwaZulu-Natal to take advantage of various business prospects offered by the agency.
About120 women from the area attended a meeting with Sanral recently.
Nomcebo Cebekhulu, Sanral’s communications officer, said the meeting aimed to inform women about opportunities at Sanral.
“It is in our policy that each and every project reserves 30% of the work for targeted groups like women, youth, and military veterans,” she said. “It is part of our mandate to coach construction business people in our pre-tender training sessions so they are the first to get the opportunities. We want women in construction to depend on themselves, using the knowledge we give them, to know what is coming and how you can position yourself,” she said.
Mzwandile Xaba, from Sanral Transformation Unit in the Eastern Region, said they wanted to change the status quo in the construction industry.
He said 90% of the big companies getting contracts from Sanral were white-owned while only 10% were black-owned. Xaba added that men dominated the field.
“Three years ago we started working to change this. It is not easy work, but we will win. It is for this reason we run campaigns such as this one. We make an effort to visit women and empower them with knowledge so they can stand up and take up positions in the construction industry,” he said.
Busisiwe Ncala, training coordinator from Sanral, said this visit was to undertake pre-tender training.
She said those who would be accepted for the training needed to make sure the construction company was tax compliant and registered on the central database.