Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele visits the Thabo Mofutsanyana Municipal District in the Free State to interact with the community and to discuss the rollout plans for broadband in the district
The Minister of Telecommunication and Postal Services Dr Siyabonga Cwele visited some of the sites that are going to be connected to the internet in the Thabo Mofut-sanyana District Municipality in the Free State as part of implementing Phase One of the rollout of broadband or fast, reliable, secure and affordable internet.
The Minister was accompanied by Free State Health MEC Benny Malakoane and the Ex-ecutive Mayor of the Thabo Mofutsanyana District Municipality, Councillor Malefu Vilaka-zi and other councillors.
The leaders also visited households in Phuthaditjhaba to deliver aids and health aware-ness messages ahead of the World Aids Day and messages about other government ser-vices.
Government has undertaken to connect its offices across the country, starting in the rural areas, to ensure that South Africans have access to the most modern communications tools and services and that they are able to use them to accelerate the socio-economic development. The department has been mandated to implement this undertaking as gov-ernment implements programmes aimed at realising the future envisaged in the National Development Plan. The Department is implementing South Africa Connect, the country’s broadband policy, to meet the technology goals of the NDP that include creating an in-clusive information society.
“We are conducting these visits to ensure that provincial and local governments’ broad-band plans are aligned to the goals of South Africa Connect. We are starting in rural dis-tricts because these districts have the greatest need for access to the internet and they will be the most challenging to connect. Importantly, the lessons we’ll learn from rolling out in the pilot sites will help us connect the rest of the country,” said Minister Cwele.
He said government was focusing on rolling out broadband infrastructure that is scalea-ble to reach the high connectivity speeds outlined in SA Connect.
“The focus for us in not just on infrastructure roll out. We want this access to internet to improve service delivery. For an example, we need to have infrastructure that is capable of connecting all classrooms in a school to the internet to facilitate e-learning. We also want access to the internet to help us reduce queues at hospitals and at home affairs of-fices,” said Minister Cwele.
He said one of the key principles guiding the rollout of broadband include investing in open access networks that will help the country avoid costly duplication of infrastructure. The other principle is that of investing in a manner that protects the resources of the State.
Minister Cwele also shared with communities the work that government is doing to en-sure that the country does not experience load-shedding, job-preservation initiative and efforts to transform the economy by helping to create black industrialists.
Enquiries:
Siya Qoza
Cell: 082 898 1657
E-mail: Siya@dtps.gov.za
