By OBAKENG MAJE
19 August 2026 – The North West Department of Public Works and Roads has on Monday, convened a Technical Executive Management Committee to strength it’s institutional capacity following the concurrence of its new structure. The committee discussed the job evaluation process following the Minister of Public Service and Administration’s concurrence with the new organisational structure in March 2026.
The North West Public Works and Roads’ Head of Department (HOD), Moses Kgantsi said one of the conditions of the concurrence is that newly created and redesigned posts be subjected to job evaluation, which is meant to systematically determine the relative worth of different posts within an organisation. Kgantsi indicated that the department embarked on a review of its organisational structure to align it with its constitutional mandate, strategic objectives and service delivery requirements.
“During consultation on the new structure and the Minister’s recommendations, additional operational gaps were identified. Amongst the additional positions identified was a Directorate to specifically deal with state buildings’ compliance with occupational health and safety (OHS) requirements.
“With this unit, we envisage reducing and ultimately doing away with the closing of government buildings by the Department of Labour due to noncompliance with OHS standards which leads to the use of private leasing as an alternative which is something that government is working towards reducing,” he said.
Kgantsi further said linked to the above gap was the department’s struggle to reach its revenue collection targets hence the additional proposed Directorate for Property Sales and Rentals. He added that they are currently dealing with the challenge of not having a dedicated maintenance budget as a department that would enable them to ensure OHS compliance for their 140 state buildings.
“Elevating this Property Sales and Rentals unit to Directorate level will ensure there is a dedicated unit to focus on revenue collection so we can motivate for the Provincial Treasury to ringfence the monies collected towards maintenance of state properties.
“The meeting further discussed the recruitment of critical vacant posts. We are currently accelerating the filling of prioritised critical vacant posts and thus far we have made 50 appointments during July and August. We are ramping up our recruitment drive to contribute to the reduction of the unemployment rate,” said Kgantsi.
He said more than 100 vacant posts are still to be filled and are at various stages of recruitment across the department’s head office and the four district offices.
The Guardian 