Chairperson, hon Minister, hon members, I stand here to reaffirm our original position on the Bill when we debated it here before. We had some concerns regarding the Bill. Our first concern was the fact that these institutions were not equally resourced. It must be remembered that during the time of the merger, the commission that was charged with the shape and size of these institutions had instructions to reduce the number of institutions, but not to reduce the site of learning in these institutions, with which we agreed.
In reality, we found that the satellite institutions were poorly resourced. Some time ago - and the Minister agreed - I referred to some of these institutions being, in fact, haunted. Take, for instance, KwaGqikazi College: no quality learning can take place in that institution.
The second concern that we raised with regard to these institutions was that lecturers in these FETs were poorly qualified. We did raise our concern that, while we support the Bill, we urge the Minister to please see to it that the standard of lecturers in these institutions is raised. I thank you.