Thank you, hon Speaker. The police would be the first to tell you that they are understaffed. The Minister of Police continuously tells us in Cabinet and elsewhere that our population has increased and in 1994 we had a police service that had a number of police officials and that number has not increased much and at the same time the population has gone up. In order to fight crime, he is in need of more police officers who will be able to do the work that the whole nation expects of them. So, there is a great need there.
You are now saying that we should introduce the EPWP type of programme - I would think that the training of police needs to be more of a long-term process that requires careful choice and careful training. The Minister is in discussion with the Minister of Finance to see the extent to which this challenge of staff shortage in the police service can be resolved. With all this, he has to have the balance. There is a need of balance that has to do with whether we can be able to try and reduce the costs, particularly the salary bill level because the more we employ more people, the more the salary bill goes up and then we need to have a very good balance and at the same time focus on the security and safety of our people.
On the health side, we have a number of community health workers. When Minister Motsoaledi was the Minister of Health, he kept saying to me that the World Health Organisation has said that we need to employ closely 800 000 people who will make sure that primary health care take root in our country - and of course we don't have the money and the budget for that, but there is a great need for community health workers. More of them
need to be brought into the work that needs to be done to secure a good health regime for our people.
Hon Shaik Emam, there is a great need with regard to the EPWP. The EPWP has always been a very good stopgap measure that has assisted our people - and through it we have been able to employ no less than 4 million people in the life of its administration. Even in this case we are seeing ourselves in this administration bringing in well over 4 million people who do absolutely outstanding work. Some are involved in the health sector; some are involved in environmental matters and some are involved in road building.
I have spoken about this quite extensively in this Parliament - in this National Assembly. Yes, we need to increase more people to participate in EPWP. We will need to see the extent to which some of them can actually be brought in to work in other disciplines, but most definitely, a vote for EPWP is the best that has been done for our people because it has helped to alleviate the challenges and the poverty that many of our people are going through. Thank you, Madam Speaker. [Applause]