Some 17 000 of the country`s schools still do not have computers, said finance minister Trevor Manuel in his medium-term budget policy statement.
Speaking before the National Assembly yesterday, Manuel presented his "pro-poor" budget, showing how government plans to spend taxpayers` money over the next three years.
Education played an important part of Manuel`s speech, as he said the National Treasury would allocate a further R2.7 billion for school building and maintenance over the next three-year period.
"While things have improved considerably at public schools, we are still in the serious situation that more than half of the 28 000 registered schools in the country have no access to computers," says a senior Department of Education official, who asked not to be named.
However, the official says many of these schools may already have access to computers through private donations that his department is not aware of.
Poaching problem
Manuel also decried the poaching of skilled workers from SA and other developmental states by First World countries.
"China is battling with a severe shortage of lawyers; major Indian companies are complaining about a shortage of IT professionals; everywhere there are difficulties in finding industrial, commercial and managerial expertise. Last week, the European Union announced its intent to recruit 20 million skilled foreign workers over the next 20 years. I believe that kind of parasitic behaviour is wrong," he said.
Manuel noted that SA must debate how to confront its own skills shortage and realise that other parts of the world are focusing on the same issue.
Special adjustments budgets, already tabled before Parliament and cited again in Manuel`s speech, included R500 million for national signal distributor Sentech for its wireless broadband infrastructure project, R2.5 billion for the pebble bed modular reactor and R222 million for Denel.
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