Hon Chairperson, hon Minister, hon members, as well as members of the public in the gallery, the African National Congress rises to support the Budget Vote on Communications. Firstly, we live in a time when there is an ongoing evolution of technologies and when new priorities are emerging for which new types of creator-technicians are required. South Africa needs individuals who can play important roles in this digital age. Secondly, the right to communicate is a fundamental right enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. With the right to freedom of expression, which includes the freedom to receive and impart information or ideas, comes the right to access the means to speak and be heard.
In this speech I'm going to cover two state-owned enterprises, namely the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa, Nemisa, and the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa, Usaasa, which are responsible to make sure our underserved population, which includes women, youth and people with disabilities, have a place of education and training to obtain production, technical and broadcasting skills and have access to ever-developing technology.
Nemisa is a state-owned enterprise which was established as a non-profit organisation in terms of the Companies Act of 1973. It provides much-needed skills training at an advanced level for the broadcasting industry. Nemisa was formed as part of a government initiative in 1998 and its fundamental purpose is to train previously disadvantaged individuals, particularly women, and equip them with the skills necessary to play a significant role in the broadcasting environment.
Nemisa has undergone a strategic shift from traditional broadcasting training to being a fully fledged multimedia training institution. It is accredited by the Council for Higher Education and offers diploma courses, short courses and internships in three subjects, namely TV production, radio production and creative multimedia. The emphasis is on equipping students to be market-ready in a wide range of broadcasting disciplines and to have the ability to work effectively in constantly changing conditions.
The budget allocation for Nemisa for 2010-11 is over R32,6 million. This budget will cover the following focus areas: content development for national heritage, more than R2,1 million; e-health R1,5 million; gender, disability, youth and child mainstreaming R1,2 million; broadcasting digital migration R3,3 million; community development R4 million; media industries new entrants development, more than R11 million; and information technology technicians development R404 000.
As the portfolio committee, we had the opportunity to do an oversight visit at Nemisa and it was nice to see first hand what the students were doing. Students staged a production led by a producer who was a former student at Nemisa. We were also able to see, from start to finish, from paper to screen, how animation was produced.
The vision of the Department of Communications is to make South Africa a global leader in harnessing information and communications technology for socioeconomic development. As a result Usaasa was established in 2006. Usaasa stands for the Universal Service and Access Agency of South Africa. This organisation was established in terms of section 58 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The main role of this agency is to promote universal service and access to communications technologies and services for all South Africans. It also facilitates and offers guidance on evaluating, monitoring and implementing programmes that propose to improve universal access and service.
The Universal Service and Access Fund was established in accordance with the provision of Chapter 7 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as amended, and its mandate, as stipulated in section 66 of the Act, states that the money in this fund shall be utilised for the following: assistance of needy persons towards the costs of the provision to or the use by them of telecommunications; to Telkom and to any other holder of a licence whose requirement is to extend telecommunications services to areas and communities which are not being served or not adequately served by the telecommunications services, for the purpose of financing such an extension; to public schools and public further education training institutions for the procurement of internet services and equipment necessary to access the internet; for the establishment of centres where access can be obtained to telecommunications facilities; for the establishment of public information terminals; and to facilitate the provision of multimedia services.
Usaasa is mandated to manage this fund and the operations contributed towards it. The budget allocation for Usaasa for the year 2010-11 is R20 million for infrastructure and R46,7 million as a contribution to operations.
Usaasa has the following focus areas for this financial year: mainly, the development of the Universal Access and Service Strategy; publication guidelines for the Universal Service Fund application; all Usaasa subsidised sites mapped in a geographical information system; and the development of measurable ICT access and impact indicators. It will also focus on the implementation of the set-top boxes scheme of ownership model; the development of a competitive bidding strategy and its implementation; the continued implementation of handover strategy; the development and implementation of an ICT hub model; and the implementation of the rapid deployment strategy.
The international definition of "universal service access" includes the concepts of availability, accessibility and affordability. Even though there has been good ICT growth in South Africa, the country is still a long way away from universal access to all. We support the work done by Nemisa and Usaasa, and as the ANC we support this Budget Vote.
At the same time, I would like to thank the department as well as the other stakeholders in the family of communications for their work. Thank you for making access possible to me as a deaf person. Thank you very much. [Applause.]