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KZN Minister of Education and Culture details the province's priorities in fighting HIV/AIDS
Media Release.Department of Education and Culture, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government. 01 December 2003.
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The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education and Culture has committed R26,6 million from a National Conditional Grant to the fight against HIV/AIDS. More than a million people have been reached at workshops and other events and more than 20 000 - educators as well as learners - have had specialised training.
Speaking in Durban today (Monday, 01 December 2003) at the KwaZulu-Natal Premier's HIV and AIDS Indaba, the provincial Minister of Education and Culture, Mr Narend Singh, said his department had four priorities - preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS; creating a culture of care and support; working to protect the quality of education; and managing a coherent response.
He said the million people reached included senior officials of his department, as well as of the Departments of Health and Agriculture and Environmental Affairs; school governing bodies; parents; traditional leaders; and traditional healers.
More than 15 000 primary and secondary educators had been trained in life skills and 300 in care and support. Eighty had been trained in lay counselling. About 5 000 secondary school learners had been trained as peer educators, projecting a positive role in good behaviour. These activities continue.
Mr Singh said HIV/AIDS threatened to be a double blow to the economic development on which South Africa's future depended.
"HIV/AIDS is a pandemic of tragic and debilitating consequences, wherever it touches on human society. Apart from physical suffering, the pain of bereavement and the loss of household heads and breadwinners, it threatens to cut a swathe through the productive workforce, doing great damage to the economy.
"It is in the education sector that the menace is particularly stark. Leaving aside for the moment the dimension of human suffering, if HIV/AIDS is not contained within the education sector, it threatens to wipe out a significant part of a generation of school-leavers who should be coming into the economy, plus severely undermine the skills base of those who survive.
"HIV/AIDS would therefore be a double blow to the economic development on which South Africa's future depends - badly undermining productivity in the existing workforce and undermining it even worse in the succeeding generation of workers."
He said it was incumbent on government to take strongly proactive measures against the threat. |
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