Address by the Honourable Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services, Dr Siyabonga Cwele, on the occasion of the fifth National Congress of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), White River, Mpumalanga
Programme Director,
President and Leadership of the Communication Workers Union
Leadership of COSATU – Comrade Vavi
Members and Allies of the CWU
Esteemed Leaders and Representatives of the ICT sector,
Representatives of State Departments,
Comrades and Delegates
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Let me first thank you for giving the opportunity to participate in this this very important occasion in the history of the organisation, the fifth National Congress of the Communication Workers Union (CWU).
I am aware that as the CWU you have been with us in the trenches to transform South Africa in general and the ICT sector in particular since your foundation in 1996. This conference takes place during the year in which we mark 20 years of freedom and democracy.
In the past 20 years we have transformed our country from an undemocratic, oppressive and corrupt state to the South Africa we live in today. We have made massive gains for the rights of our people including the workers. We continue to recognise and appreciate the workers for their role in the liberation struggle as well as their continued struggle for a better life for all South Africans.
Programme Director
In as much as we face many challenges, challenges that I will address later, there can be no denying that the ICT sector has transformed significantly over the past 20 years because of the policies pursued by our democratic government. Despite the nay sayers bent on distorting the record of success of the democratic government we can all see that there has been massive change in the ICT sector. There has been an exponential growth in the telecommunications, broadcasting and postal sectors. In 1994 the total revenues of the telecommunications sector was a mere R8,2 billion.
Today the telecommunications sector’s revenues are at a staggering R171 billion. The contributions of the telecommunications sector now stands at about 6% of the GDP. The broadcasting sector has also expanded in a significant way The advertising revenues were about R2,8 billion in 1994. Today advertising revenues stand at more than R16.2bn. The postal sector has recorded similar changes growing from R1.9bn in 1994 to more than R9 bn today. Even when we talk about challenges we need to remind ourselves of this growth so that we can correctly identify those elements of our actions that can bring about concrete results in terms of us making access to the modern communications a reality for our people.
For the reality comrades is that despite this phenomenal growth and the emergence of a sophisticated ICT sector in South Africa, the central policy question of how to bring about affordable access to reliable and robust communications infrastructure and services to all South Africans remains a pressing issue. In fact various studies are conclusive that the price we pay for communications services cannot be afforded by a significant percentage of South Africans. The prices are expensive. So expensive that some studies indicate them to be up to ten times compared to other African countries. The irony is that some of those prices are set by the very South African companies that are charging us an arm and a leg in South Africa.
The reality also is that we have yet to close the digital divide. In fact a new digital divide might be expanding if we take into consideration access to broadband infrastructure and services. Studies indicate that Gauteng and the Western Cape have reached over 80% broadband access whereas other provinces hover around 34% access to broadband connectivity. We need to work together to address these challenges so as to ensure that the gains of our democracy are equally shared by our people whether they are found in the cities, townships, rural areas and farms.
Government on its part has taken some steps to move us forward and I would like to share some information about our key activities. First was the recognition that this sector is now an important contributor to economic growth, job creation and the enablement of faster and better services to the citizens. All government companies that are involved in the infrastructure roll-out have therefore been put together under the roof of the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services. We are mandated to coordinate the infrastructure roll-out of the public sector as well as to direct the investments of the private sector so as to achieve the goals of a seamless communication infrastructure that reaches all citizens by 2030 in accordance with the goals of the NDP.
Telkom, Broadband Infraco, Sentech, SITA and USSASA are already in discussions about how they coordinate and streamline their plans for infrastructure roll-out. We are also in discussions with provinces as to how to coordinate activities by provinces and municipalities. We realise that there is a lot of coordination and ensuring that our plans work together for us not to duplicate efforts, infrastructure and waste resources. Government adopted the Broadband Policy in December last to fast track this infrastructure development and it is important that we all work together as public and private entities to ensure that we implement it.
The Broadband Policy has identified the need to connected schools, health facilities and government offices as a top priority. By 2019 all schools, clinics, hospitals and government offices should be connected to fast speed broadband so as to help have access to modern services. Parallel to this, comrades, government will be rolling out e-government transforming the services of all government departments, especially those that provide services directly to the public, to provide online services to the public. In future it will not be required for you to drive hundreds of kilometers in order to get government services.
It would be possible for citizens to use the communications services anytime to access the electronic services. It is obvious that we need to train the people who are in these frontline government services to enable them to relate to the new ways of delivering government services. In this regard earlier this year all government institutions providing training in the ICTs were merged to provide a structured way of proving e-skills. This e-skills institute has already entered into collaboration with various universities to pilot online courses. We will be talking to the Department of Higher Education to work out how the FET colleges can also be roped in to specialise in e-skills training.
Our digital broadcasting migration programme has suffered many delays in the past. Now the draft policy is in the cabinet processes so that it can be finalised and implemented without any delay. I must indicate though that the deployment of the digital infrastructure is almost finished. By March this year 84% coverage was supposed to have been achieved for the terrestrial infrastructure. The actual results show that just above 82% coverage of the country was achieved and the remainder will be completed during this financial year.
The rest of the 14% of the country will be covered by satellite in order to extend the digital broadband services to all areas of the country. In terms of infrastructure we can confidently say we are ready for digital broadcasting. You will be aware that the Digital Broadcasting Strategy also envisages that the decoders to receive the services will be manufactured in South Africa in order to revive the electronic manufacturing sector.
The transformation of the Post Bank is one of the important things we will be doing in order to extend the banking and financial services to reach those South Africans mainly in rural and peri-urban areas who have no access to these services. In addition to banking services the mandate is to work with other development finance institutions in order for them to use the reach of the Post Office and Post Bank to conduct their work in all areas of the country. This will help the cooperatives and smmes in rural areas to access these development finance institutions. The Post Bank is in the process of being corporatised in order for it to meet all the conditions stipulated by the Reserve Bank to get an operating licence.
We remain concerned about the State of the Post Office. You will be aware of the ongoing disruptions to the service delivery that is eroding the trust people place on the Post Office. A comrade there has just been too many dilapidating strikes and disruptions that will affect the viability of the Post Office going forward. Right now the Post Office is undergoing a serious financial crisis whose resolution must be attended to as a matter of urgency. We are overseeing the development of a turn-around strategy which we hope will return the Post Office to a sound footing.
We are in discussion with the National Treasury on measures to be taken to address the financial crisis and the question of the subsidy for postal services in the rural areas. Comrades I cannot stress more the need for us to join hands and work together to resolve the problems. In the recent discussions I had with the different unions represented in the Post Office I was heartened to hear that we all regard the Post Office as “Our Post Office”. This approach must be now translated to us working together to save what is in essence our collective Post Office.
We as government are exploring many avenues to use the Post Office more for government services including the delivery of grants and using the Post Office in the future as places where people will access online government services. But again all this can be done if and if people have confidence in the Post Office to deliver the services. Imagine what would happen if grants for the elderly are to be provided by the Post Office only to find the Post Office on strike at every time the grants must be accessed. This would not be fair to the elderly and counter productive to the efforts to make services easier to access. Yes there are challenges at Board level in terms of overseeing the Post Office. There are also evident managerial problems and it would seem that there is a culture of no consequences for managerial inaction or mismanagement.
These issues will be addressed as a matter of urgency because irrespective of what the Turn-Around Plan says, it cannot succeed if there is no effective oversight, if there is no effective management and if the labour relations environment is so hostile as to produce strikes at every turn. I urge you comrades to join hands with us as we work the Post Office out of the present state.
You will be aware that the President has proclaimed a number of investigations to look at wrong doings at the Department, the Post Office and USSASA. These investigations once demonstrate our resolve to root out wrongdoing and to fight corruption where ever it rears its head. These investigations are ongoing. I have emphasised to those responsible of the need to finalise the investigations without any delay so that we can take action where there is a need to take action to finalise these matters so that we can focus all our attention on the task at hand.
Many of your delegates and members work in our state own companies and I was encouraged to learn during the past four months of interaction that across the board, workers remain committed to our state owned companies and are willing to work together with management to find solutions to the many challenges that these state owned companies face. During some of our interactions workers reported their grievances and brought issues to our attention which we will continue to investigate and monitor through close working relations with the boards of the respective entities. We therefore urge workers to bare with us as we address the many challenges that face our sector. We also call for unity among workers as we collectively address these issues.
Once more let me thank you for affording me this opportunity to highlight the burning issues that need our collective wisdom. I hope that you will find space in your programme to deliberate on these and importantly on how we can ensure the ICT sector delivers on the goals of the NDP in order to enable to move South Africa Forward.
I thank you
