The Presidency is to step into the fray between the Department of Communications (DOC) and National Treasury, to unblock the funding bottleneck facing national signal distributor Sentech, says Cabinet spokesman Themba Maseko.
Maseko said yesterday, during the weekly post-Cabinet media briefing, that the three government departments would meet "urgently" to consider Sentech's funding requirements, with a view to expedite the roll-out of proposed wireless broadband infrastructure.
"This wireless broadband infrastructure is essential for improving broadband capability and access, particularly for rural communities and public facilities such as schools, clinics, courts, Thusong Service Centres (formerly called multipurpose community centres) and other government offices."
Maseko said the Presidency (which has the same status as a government department) was asked to step in because the roll-out of such services was "not going according to plan".
He went on to say the request for the Presidency to help resolve the issue had come from a number of other (unspecified) government departments that were reliant on the roll-out of this infrastructure to meet government's delivery targets.
The current government has only 10 months left in office before next year's general elections, and the delivery of services has become an important priority.
However, Maseko denied there was any particular complaint against the DOC, Sentech or the National Treasury.
In need
Earlier this year, Sentech CFO Siddique Cassim stated before Parliament that the state-owned enterprise had only received R500 million of the total R4.4 billion it needed. It said it required this sum to provide wireless broadband to the Dinaledi Schools (those schools earmarked by the Department of Education with particular emphasis on teaching maths and science) and to meet the other government broadband requirements.
The required tranches were R912 million in the 2007/8 fiscal year, and R666 million in the next year, until the R3.1 billion that National Treasury was expected to fund was met.
During that meeting, National Treasury director-general for public finance Andrew Donaldson said Sentech should focus on its core competencies of ensuring the country would meet its ambitious goal of digital TV migration over three years.
Donaldson asserted that Sentech's wireless broadband strategy was extremely thin, with no indication that such services were actually needed, who would use them, and how, for instance, the computers at the schools would be funded.
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