SOUTH AFRICA GOVERNMENT CONCERNED ABOUT CONTINUED COMPUTER THEFTS IN SCHOOLS BuaNews Online homepage

Date: 07 Apr 2006Title: New hope dawns for local youth
By Themba Gadebe

Siyabuswa - Education Minister Naledi Pandor yesterday instilled a sense of new hope among young people here when she outlined opportunities available to them.

Addressing a packed hall here as part of the government's Imbizo Focus Week, she told young people that government was doing all it could to empower the youth especially with skills.

This leg of the focus week builds on last year's Municipal Imbizo Programme that was aligned with Project Consolidate. It also consolidates the shift in emphasis from identifying problems in communities to solving them.

This period allows communities and members of the executive to interact around local programmes of action to promote effective and speedy implementation of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGISA) and other government programmes.

ASGISA is a set of interventions aimed at raising the country's economic growth rate to six percent by 2014.

Minister Pandor indicated that government intended to establish focus schools that specialised in specific areas such as drama and the performing arts.

"I would also like to tell young people not to look at universities as the only avenue to acquire skills.

"We have invested R1.5 billion in FET colleges to train our youth in scarce skills that are much needed by the country," said Ms Pandor.

In terms of information technology, the minister noted that government was in the process of rolling out computers in schools in line with the e-learning policy that dealt with the essentiality of computer literacy.

"We have also introduced technology because we want out people to be technological competent," she said

However, she expressed concern at computer theft and vandalism.

"As communities let us do some soul searching and ask ourselves why are we stealing computers, why are we damaging our schools?

"We need to treat our schools the same way we do to churches where you cannot find anything damaged by a community," she said.

Minister Pandor further announced that by 2010, each school in the country would have a complete computer laboratory.

She also appealed to the local government authorities to improve sports facilities to unlock youth's potential in the area.

"We need these young people to represent a country in big sport tournaments. I would also like to see them coming back to coach at schools and build a winning Bafana Bafana for 2010," said the minister.

A young resident Chris Mnisi told BuaNews that it was now clear that opportunities were available. The problem, he said, was lack of communication.
Ms Pandor urged the residents to advise local authorities on how to expedite service delivery such as housing and electricity, how to halve poverty and how disabled people could be part of local economic development as this is also an opportunity for newly elected local government leadership to engage with those they represented. - BuaNews