Chairperson, thank you very much to the Deputy President. Chair, you will forgive me if I do not ask a question, or if my question is irrelevant. I can see that they are seated next to each other because maybe the question is relevant to the Minister of Higher Education and Training. It has to do with rural development.
Hon Deputy President, last week during provincial week, and understanding rural development as one of the key priority areas, we visited an area in Vaalharts in the Northern Cape. Having visited the research station, we came across very serious information that was quite disturbing. The senior researcher disclosed to us that one of the things that was going to affect our approach or governance programme of rural development negatively is the question of skills development. This is because, he said, in the country at the moment there were only 10 agricultural engineers and he said that he was left with about three or four years until he retired.
The question is: what deliberate effort is being made to ensure that there is a programme aimed at skills development in the area of rural development and, in particular, with regard to agricultural engineers, agricultural economists, and so forth? He was blunt: He said that the problem we were faced with was that all 10 were over the age of 50 and white; that very soon they would be retiring and that they didn't know what the country was going to do. That is why I apologised before, Chair.