Chairperson, may I, at the outset, thank all the members who participated in the debate for their valuable comments, generally, that have been made. Let me also express my gratitude to Rev Moatshe and his committee for the manner in which this Bill was processed, and for bringing to our attention some of the feelings of the provinces on this matter.
A number of speakers have spoken about matters that do not relate directly to the Bill. I will also then take the liberty of going with the flow and speaking about matters that have nothing to do with the Bill. However, I will come back to that in a moment.
I want to just reply to some of the matters that were raised. I think the hon Versveld is quite off the mark on the question of whale watching and the interests of Satour in this particular area. I think frankly that she is quite wrong.
One of the important steps that we have taken recently is to market ourselves in terms of wildlife not just as a Big Five destination, but as a Big Six destination, because South Africa is one of the few places in the world where you can engage in land-based whale-watching. Walker Bay and most of the Southern Cape, right up to the Eastern Cape, provide land-based whale-watching opportunities, which is quite unique.
That is one of the reasons why, if the hon Versveld had been in communication with members of her own party, she would have known that Mr Colin Eglin, a member of the National Assembly, has been rather active in promoting the declaration of a whale sanctuary in Walker Bay. This is something which I have taken up. We have jointly visited the area, etc. Maybe the hon Versveld is not in tune with all those developments and she was just speaking out of ignorance. So I should try not to be too harsh on her.
I think a number of speakers, including the hon Sebekedi, usefully raised the question of whether this was an unfunded mandate, and how provinces were going to deal with this particular matter.
Let me just say something on this matter. In the first place, one must understand that the kind of system we have, the kind of intergovernmental financial system regulated by the Constitution, really does not make it possible for me or for anybody to give an assurance to this House that over the years provinces will, somehow, get money from the fiscus for this sort of matter. It is not possible to do that kind of thing because, when Parliament allocates money to provinces, it does not say how provinces should use that money. Provinces adopt their own budgets in their provincial legislatures, and it is the right of the provincial legislature to do so. Nobody can take that right away.
Of course, one can say that among the factors that are taken into account, tourism development should be one. But one should remember that it is the Constitution that stipulates the criteria that the Financial and Fiscal Commission, the national Treasury and Parliament have to take into account when voting and deciding on the Budget as such. So it is not such an easy matter to simply give an assurance on and say this is what is going to happen.
The second point I would like to make is that it is not as though the national Government or anybody has, even now, been budgeting huge sums of money which it is now going to save and not use because the function is going to provinces. That is not the case. This has really been a very, very low-budget activity.
Nonetheless, I have said that perhaps provinces may incur some start-up costs, firstly, and that is something we should look at. It is not going to be easy, but I will, particularly as a result of this debate, personally engage in consultations with Satour to see how we can assist provinces with their start-up costs, because there will be some start-up costs before the revenue starts coming in through the registration of tour guides and such things. That may help to some extent.
The third point I would like to make is again one that the hon Sebekedi made, an important point about training. That is, who is going to pay for the training of tour guides? This is an important area. Now here the Tourism and Hospitality Education and Training Authority, which is a recognised statutory body as such, is the body responsible for training, and it is a national institution. It is responsible for training because it sets the standards and qualification and makes sure that there is proper career pathing for tour guides. The qualifications Act also comes into play here. That body has prioritised training in the tourism industry, not just tour guiding. The Business Trust has voted an amount of R80 million towards learnerships and training programmes to be administered by the Theta. Through the training levy, the Department of Labour has added R30 million to that. So there is an amount of R110 million, I think, if I am right - I am not always so sure of the figures, but the chief director is nodding - which will be used over three years for training in the tourism sector. This is a substantial amount of money. It is one of the most ambitious education and training and learnership programmes that we are going to be embarking upon.
We want to use a part of this amount in upgrading the skills of existing tour guides because, as the hon Mokoena said, some tour guides actually do not know what it is that they are going to talk about. Some people have been trained to say that there are four provinces in South Africa, the Cape of Good Hope and Transvaal and so on, those sorts of things. They read in the newspapers that there are now nine provinces, but they have not been trained with regard to why there are nine provinces, what the provinces are, that provinces have elected legislatures, how a premier gets elected, what the political parties are, etc. Even existing tour guides need some amount of refresher training, which we hope to provide, as well as training for new guides.
Again, the hon Mokoena has said that some people may know a lot about a certain area, but may not have a BA degree as such, and are able to tell one much more than anybody with a BA degree from Wits University would about a particular area, indigenous plants, uses of plants, and such things. Those people may only require some additional training to become registered tour guides because, already, the essence is there.
So those funds will be used, and I can tell hon members that they are substantial funds. We do not expect provinces to dip into their own budgets for that sort of training. So we will make sure that we follow that up and we will be committed to it. I will ask the department to look into and ensure that the Theta also covers the training of tour guides. I think that is what I could say in response here.
The hon Conroy has raised the question of litter, which, as hon members know, is a matter that continues to be of concern to me personally, and, I think, to all of us. It is a very serious problem. I was in Singapore last week on some official business. I do not know if the hon MEC Jomo Khasu knows about this matter, but if one takes chewing gum in one's bag into Singapore, one can get arrested. They do not allow the chewing of chewing gum because people stick the gum under the table and under the chair when nobody is looking. [Interjections.]
We do not want to be as harsh as that, but, certainly, I think that this is a matter we must attend to. Singapore is a very clean city, one does not see any cigarette butts, paper or anything in the street that messes it up. So it is possible to clean things up, even in our own country.
Let us take, for instance, Messina. Messina was one of the dirtiest towns in the whole country. Now it is one of the cleanest towns in the whole country. The mayor of the town personally took it upon himself and said that if there was one thing he was going to do, he was going to clean up that town. He has cleaned it up and has received recognition throughout the country for having cleaned up the town. The town is so important because large numbers of visitors come into the country through Beit Bridge and the first thing they saw was rubbish heaps. Now the mayor has cleaned up the town. If one takes a town such as Douglas in the Northern Cape, which is, again, a very small town, the people there had a huge gathering at a sports stadium where they decided that they were going to stop the use of plastic bags there. They did it on their own, they did not wait for legislation or anything.
If one goes to a shop in Douglas one will not get a plastic bag. The publicity association went to all the shopkeepers, asking for their co- operation. They went to schools to speak to schoolchildren about why plastic bags are bad, what that means, etc, so that everybody understood, through a process of education and in a real grass-roots way. So it is possible to do these sorts of things.
This is a matter that I raised with the Chief Whip of the NCOP, but perhaps I raised it too informally. Maybe I should formally request the NCOP to assist us with this antilitter work. I really think that the NCOP can help us. I am not sure how, but I think if hon members here think about it, I am sure this House will give valuable suggestions. The hon members say we should start here. The important question is: What is the waste management system in the parliamentary precincts? Does Parliament separate its waste? Does it send glass and paper, at least, for recycling, or does it just dump them there?
More importantly, I think we should involve the provinces and local governments, because without provinces and local governments we are not going to get anywhere. Hon members may want to organise a special debate or work out some sort of programme of action, but I would really urge them to assist us in this regard.
The hon Dr Conroy spoke about the plastic bag issue. We have now received comments on the draft regulations. The period for the comments is over and the department is now digesting all of the comments that have been received. Once we have considered all the comments we will finalise and publish the final regulations as such, and I hope to be able to do it by early next year.
It is not going to be easy, because there are people who, for their own selfish reasons, would want to oppose our prohibition on plastic bags, and they have said all sorts of things. Some of these people have said that a lot of people will lose their jobs, but hon members should know that these plastic bags, these throwaway carrier bags, are not really made in a labour- intensive process. They are made by machines, just by the tens of thousands, so it is not very labour-intensive.
If we do not use the plastic bags, then whatever other packaging we use will create more jobs. Already we have people who are sewing cloth bags, like here in the Cape where the Methodist women have come together and are now running a project. It is creating some employment for people and alternative sorts of jobs.
Then they have asked what about those people, particularly poor women, who are using the plastic bags to make artefacts, things like hats and mats. I think that is an easy problem to solve. All we need to do is supply plastic, probably in an easier way in the form of rolls of plastic. That is something that can be done for people to do that sort of thing. One does not need plastic bags. One needs to find a way of supplying the plastic, new clean plastic, to do that sort of thing, because in any case it is quite a hassle for people to be using plastic bags.
Some of the retail outlets, I have no doubt, will also try to oppose this sort of thing. However, I am pleased that although it is not a matter directly related to this Bill, hon members have used the opportunity to once again restate their support, and I think we need to do that kind of thing. One of the big retail outlets said to me that in terms of their customer base they are in direct contact with so many million people on an annual basis, so many million people go through their retail outlets throughout the country, and that they can speak to all these people about the disadvantages of prohibiting plastic bags, so lots of people are going to oppose me. So one can see the veiled sort of threat that comes in. However, I hope we will follow that up at some point in time.
We continue to develop new and more exciting tourism products, and let me just say to hon members here that in a few weeks' time we will be having what I think is called a coastal week - we have so many special weeks. It will be a very exciting week concerning the management of the coast. [Interjections.] It might be called maritime or marine week. Part of what we are going to be doing is cleaning up areas of the coast, which also happened during the cleanup week that we had. However, during that week we will also be launching a very exciting tourism product, because we have looked at one of the competitive advantages that we have in tourism, for us to enjoy and for the world to enjoy, namely the various hiking trails that we have around the country. We have also looked at how other countries market their hiking trails.
We have a 3 000 km coastline and we will be launching, during that week, in a few weeks' time, a hiking trail that starts at Kosi Bay and ends at the Orange River mouth, covering the 3 000 km coastline. It will be quite a unique hiking trail worldwide as it passes two oceans, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean, taking one through very diverse ecological areas throughout its length. We already have a team of volunteers who will start off by hiking that entire trail. It is not the sort of thing which everybody would do, but I know people like my chairperson of the select committee, Rev Moatshe, who is a keen hiker. I am sure that pretty soon he will take the initiative of leading a team of prominent citizens on that particular hike. Once again, thank you very much for the debate. [Applause.]