Hon Chair, hon Minister and Deputy Minister, hon guests in our gallery, we acknowledge your presence. Hon Minister, it's scrum time.
Kom ons "scrum" saam. [Let us scrum together.]
The provision of recreational facilities, especially in rural areas, is particularly welcome to the UDM. We appreciate that. We are raw, rural rustics.
The move towards spending more on sports activities by citizens in general as an investment in living healthy lifestyles is also supported. However, such investments should be monitored and evaluated in terms of their success at actually increasing levels of wellness, which is the intended purpose of the programme. In that way, we will be able to isolate certain areas as pilot sites and determine how many people there actually need to go to clinics. Otherwise, if we just roll programmes out without putting monitoring mechanisms in place, we are not going to get good returns on our investment.
In response to the identified risk of relying on teachers to train kids at school, our suggestion is simply that we should appoint people from outside of the teaching profession who have recognised qualifications in psychology and physical education. We have seen the consequences of asking and expecting teachers to perform this task. Conditions are not as they were in our time. Teachers require certain things that the government finds difficult to provide, yet they are still expected to deliver. Let's appoint people whose focus will be on training kids. The meaningful way in which this can be done is to cluster schools by region and by federation. If we roll out such a programme it will encourage young people to give their best.
On the department's priorities, which are most welcome, the acid test will be how to implement... [Interjections.] Hello, hon Mr Mnguni.
Please add Border Rugby to the list of institutions that need special, critical attention. That unit is suffering constant illness. Transformation is a very critical area that needs specially focused attention, federation by federation.
I have gone through a lot of the documents that have been submitted by the department and I have not seen any bold and radical plans to transform the intransigent federations. I have not seen that. Minister, you are challenged to make sure that your department produces those plans.
The reasons offered by the department for budget reductions in the bursary programme are just not convincing. In fact, they rebut the overall goals of the department.
In closing, I want to say that the development of recreational facilities, through the municipal infrastructure grant programme, is progressing very slowly. This is not acceptable. This would address the fundamental problems that we are experiencing at local government level. I have been a player at local government level for the past 10 years. Some municipalities just do not care much about sport. You need to do something.
Lastly, none of the documents that we have seen pertaining to the active nation programme - that consumes over 50% of your budget, Minister - report or reflect any socioeconomic spin-offs. We don't know if that was the intention, but I could not find anything to that effect.
The UDM supports the budget. Thank you.