Program director
Education MEC, Mr Senzo Mchunu
School Prinicipal
Educators
Learners and parents
Amakhosi present
All protocol observed
Good Morning/ Sanibonani
During the first day of our school calendar this year 2011, members of our provincial legislature embarked on a school visiting programme to all schools across the province. The main objective of this yearly exercise is to ensure that teaching and learning happens on the very first day. Over and above everything else, the intention is to give our support to the education sector as government and as parents. I visited schools in Sisonke District, Umzimkhulu in particular and we had discussions with school principals and teachers about their programmes, success and challenges. What often comes up when we assess their needs, are a lot of requests for infrastructure items like school furniture, buildings etc. Our presence here at Sabuyaze today shows that we determined to improve the status of our schools.
Education is one of the Key priorities of our government if not the most important. It is a key to the development of any nation because it’s a sector that builds and grooms our human capital. Education is central to our activities as a country because even as we continue to address complex challenges of skills shortage and skills development, we highly rely on its guidance in finding lasting solutions for our social and economic development.
Our work as the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development ties in well with education sector as the end-user of our invasive alien species programme bi-products. Perhaps I need to expatiate on the subject a bit so that we empower all those that have little information and understanding of the impact of invasive alien species in our lives.
What are invasive plants and what problem do they cause?
Invasive alien plants are plants that have been brought to South Africa from other countries, for their beauty, economic value or ecological purpose. Some are brought in unintentionally and are brought here without their natural enemies, and without their natural enemies, these plants are able to reproduce prolifically.
The alien plants or their seeds enter the country in a number of different ways: for example on people’s shoes, by mail order on ships, planes, migration of birds, etc. Because they do not have their natural control mechanisms in the country, these alien plants spread rapidly and out-compete the indigenous plant species, thereby becoming invasive.
Invasive alien plants pose a direct threat not only to our biological diversity, but also to water security, the ecological functioning of natural systems and they also pose a threat to the productive use of land. They intensify the impact of veld fires and floods and increase soil erosion. These problems negatively results in huge reduction in the available water, results in loss of biodiversity and loss of eco systems, loss of potentially productive agricultural land, loss of conservation land, loss of grazing land, could cause poisoning to livestock, and could cause greater incidence of veld fires.
Let me cite a few realistic examples:
- When there is less water - water rates will increase, as new dams will need to be constructed
- When there is less water - there will be reduction to agricultural yields, resulting in igh food prices, resulting in increased poverty
- When we lose the biodiversity and ecosystems - we will lose our clean air, ecotourism and even our traditional medicines
- When we lose the potentially productive agricultural land and conservation land - there will be a reduction in the land value
- When we lose grazing lands for livestock – We will have to use more supplementary feed for the livestock and thus high costs in livestock farming, increased poverty
- Poisoning of livestock – we will have to purchase medicine for the care of the livestock and thus livestock farming costs going up, some of the livestock may die after eating the poisonous alien plants
- When cattle had eaten the harmful alien plants, the meat quality is compromised, thus we get less returns from selling such meat.
I’m sure that now you concur with me that all of this have a negative impact on both our social and economic sectors. This is why then the department initiated the Invasive Alien Species Programme.
Invasive Alien Species Programme
The Invasive Alien Species Programme (IASP) is a programme of the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development, that is tasked with eradicating and managing invasive alien species (both plants and animals) in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The Invasive Alien Species Programme was officially launched in 2005 and more than 4 000 job opportunities have been created each year. More than 200 000 Ha of land have been cleared of invasive alien plants and over R400 million has been spent on this programme. In some cases, the land that was cleared of invasive alien plants has been returned back to agricultural production or is used to contribute to sustainable livelihoods.
The programme has the following objectives:
- To use labour-intensive techniques to control existing invasions and prevent further introductions of invasive alien species, thereby contributing to the restoration and protection of agricultural potential of land. This includes the clearing of hectares of land invaded by invasive alien plants in specified areas in the province
- To create short term jobs opportunities, which include creating emerging contractors
- Identify and maximise value adding opportunities to create secondary industries such as eco-coffin manufacturing, school desks manufacturing and any other value adding product
- Assist in improving the level of awareness of invasive alien species through partnerships with local stakeholders such as municipalities and schools.
The link of alien plants clearing and the school desks projects
As earlier mentioned, the Invasive Alien Species Programme is an initiative of the provincial government to help in the control of invasive alien plants and in so doing to create job opportunities for the many rural, urban and peri-urban unemployed members of communities within the province. During the implementation of this programme, local communities are employed and trained in environmental based workshops and also trained in the making and manufacturing of value adding products such as eco coffins, and the school desks, you see today. The School Desk Project is part of a Value Adding Project that currently employs 91 people of which 47 percent are women; 37 percent are youth and 5 percent are people with disabilities.
It needs to be emphasised that, the manufacturing of school desks is not the core function of the department, but the thinking was realised after clearing projects had been initiated, it was discovered that a lot of biomass, (cut trees) was left in the veld to root, at times this was viewed to be something that could become a fire hazard. From then it was realised that some of these unwanted cut alien plants could be used in the making of some value adding products, something that was seen having potential to enhance the training and empowerment of the beneficiaries with skills that they can use when they exit the programme, skills such as furniture making, eco coffin making and now the school desks manufacturing.
Training and empowerment of the beneficiaries of the IASP programme is seen as one of the key solution to address the socio- economic challenges of the rural poor communities. The value adding projects which include the manufacturing of school desks was seen as the main vehicle that could be used to part-skills and empower some of the people employed through the programme. The vision of the department with regard to the value adding projects is to identify gaps within the community in which people can be trained, to then, train and empower programme beneficiaries, with the skills identified and at a later stage, let them form their own business initiatives outside the department’s ambit.
For now the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Affairs and Rural Development, will continue to manufacture and sell school desks to identified schools in the province. It is envisaged that such desks will be made available at minimal costs to the Department of Education.
Ladies and gentleman, today’s objective is to hand over the 200 Desks to Sabuyaze Primary School. This form just the first finished products of the school desks manufacturing project and it is hoped that with this first consignment, it is the beginning of a good working relationship of our department (DAEA & RD) and the Department of Education in the province.
I thank you.
Ngiyabonga
