Last Friday, in his State of the Nation Address, President Thabo Mbeki drew the nation's attention to the hope that is abundant and growing in our country:

our people are firmly convinced that our country has entered its Age of Hope. They are convinced that we have created the conditions to achieve more rapid progress towards the realisation of their dreams. They are certain we are indeed a winning nation.

Today, as we open this session of the Provincial Legislature, we can confirm that even in this Province we have seen the strong emergence of hope, a hope made ever more heroic given the great battles we fight on a daily basis against our inheritance from the past, divisions and alienation that persist into the present, and even the ravages of nature that often capriciously alternates drought with flood, and flood with fire.

Out of all this, the heroes of hope are those who steadfastly battle the fire on the mountains and in the squatter camps; those who persevere on the drought-stricken farms whether owners or workers; those who care for the vulnerable and those who grow the economy; those who shun the easy gains of exploiting difference and those who build bridges across our many divides.

Our hope lies in the resilience of our people in the first instance. But it also lies in the fact that our people are working with government to ensure delivery on an unprecedented scale. In the last two years our hope in this Province has soared as government, labour, and patriotic business people managed to keep operations going in three clothing factories in the face of hostile global forces; as we increased the police force by 8000 and reduced contact crimes by an average of 10% per year; as we manage the delicate balancing act of using less budget more purposefully, especially for the poorest amongst us; as we created about 40 000 EPWP jobs; as a total of 12 600 people today in this Province are on ARV treatment to complement our strong disease preventative programmes; as over 100 000 children receive the Child Support Grant every month; as we built fifteen new schools in a record 6 months accommodating 17 000 learners; as we for the first time, have in place the regulatory frameworks that sustain the natural heritage of our Province; as we have been able to transfer 10 000 hectares of land to emerging farmers as one of the clearest signs that justice is being done; as we set clearly our intention around service delivery by starting our assault on the bucket system in de Doorns and bringing relief to those in housing arrears in Lentegeur and Gatesville; and as we build our diverse home for all through language festivals, sport facilities and the availability of library books and free internet connectivity. Indeed, the age of hope has also dawned in the Western Cape.

This does not mean we have no challenges. This government is painfully aware that 26.3% of our citizens are unemployed. That most of them are youth also speaks to the massive skills challenges we face. This government knows that grinding poverty defines the life of many among us as evidenced in the sprawling informal settlements, hunger of hopelessness. This government knows that mothers are desperate to find an end to tik and other drugs that have transformed their children in front of their eyes. No one knows more the impact of trauma in our communities resulting from alcohol and manifesting itself in acts of violence inside and outside the household, and in motor vehicle accidents that kill and maim.

It is this inequality between people, the unequal access to assets, resources and opportunities, that makes it so difficult for citizens to see each other without mistrust and suspicious, always believing that the other racial, religious or language group has preferential access. It is precisely this inequality that creates such a fertile ground for political charlatans to exploit the competition for scarce resources for their own narrow and short-sighted gain.

It is out of marginalisation and disempowerment that communities, families and people turn in on each other. Hence, this Province's notoriety for its ill-treatment of women, the battery of wives, the abuse of children, the neglect of the elderly, and the alienation of the youth.

The age of hope must be sustained will not last if we do not reverse these social patterns. The age of hope provides us with the best opportunity in the Western Cape to make a decisive shift towards Prosperity. Every lesson we have learnt in our first decade of freedom has placed us on the threshold of prosperity.

We have learnt crucial lesson about how to reverse the legacies of the past and how to navigate a sustainable pathway to a prosperous future in the intensely inter-connected world of the 21st Century.

We learnt that we could run this country with its modern economy. We have learnt well how to deepen a culture of democracy and human rights. We learnt how the machinery of the state can begin to serve the majority without bankrupting the fiscus or isolating the economy. We are still learning to manage a dramatic increase in basic services, amenities and infrastructure in the face of rapid growth in new households, where many recipients do not have stable incomes or assets.

The most important lesson of the first decade is that the deep-rooted problems of poverty, inequality and economic exclusion cannot simply be overcome through meeting basic needs. To consolidate our freedom we need the economic transformation of our society. The social wage provided by the state increasingly and progressively has to be augmented or replaced by an economic wage.

Are we truly on the threshold of prosperity? The age of hope has indeed placed us on the threshold of prosperity. Consider the following critical economic indicators for the province:

• For the second consecutive year, provincial growth is at 5.3%, fuelled by good sectoral growth.
• In the past two years the Business Process Outsourcing industry has created 6000 new jobs on the back of almost R1bn in new investment.
• Overseas tourists increased from 810 000 in 2000 to 1,535,000 in 2004.
• Agricultural exports increased threefold over the past few years manifested in a growth rate of 7.4% in the current financial year.
• The construction sector's annual growth rate moved from 5.8% in 2004/5 to 8.8% in the current financial year.
• The buoyancy of the economy attracted stronger foreign direct investment to the value of R1.4bn in 2005.
• Lastly, we are also making progress on the jobs front; in 2004, 151 000 more matriculates were employed compared to 2000.

All of these are indeed signs that we are on the threshold of prosperity. But the prosperity has to be shared by all, otherwise it will not be sustainable..

If President Thabo Mbeki quoted from Shakespeare's Macbeth to underpin the age of hope, let me quote Gloucester in King Lear to underpin why our path to prosperity must be on the paradigm of Shared Growth:

"that Distribution should undo excess,and each man have enough."

Using this wisdom as a basis, our determination as a Province to contribute to, and benefit from, the Accelerated and Shared growth Initiative of South Africa (ASGISA) must meet the challenges of resilient growth.

Firstly, we must intervene to accelerate the rate of growth to over 6% by 2010. We, are therefore focussed on removing any obstacles to higher rates of growth such as our skills base, the high cost of finance, strategic infrastructure that impedes the movement of goods and services, locational disadvantages, and undue administrative red tape.

Secondly, we need to intervene from the outset to ensure that higher rates of growth are pro-poor, where the incomes of the poor grow faster than the rest of the population. In this we need to stem the growing inequality and act against the instinct of a largely service-based economy in the Province where skilled labour commands sizeable salaries.

Thirdly, shared growth has to ensure that poor households are empowered beyond welfare grants. This means focussing on quality targeted education that equip young people with employable skills; affordable and reliable public transport to lower the cost of economic participation; and healthy and vibrant living environments - even in informal dwellings.

Fourthly, shared growth has to be about nurturing the entrepreneurial spirit amongst people and creating the supply-side infrastructure (information, finance, training, marketing support, and so forth) and adjusting the regulatory environment to allow the Second Economy to flourish in our communities and our streets.

Lastly, shared growth also means that the poor must be enabled to participate meaningfully in shaping the institutions and communities of society. Such citizenship demands responsive governance and an engaging citizenry. Our schools, for example, will not deliver what society needs if the Idasa Service Delivery Survey continues to show that the main obstacles to educational excellence in the province are a lack of parental involvement in School Governing Bodies followed by poor learner discipline. Other drivers of educational performance are quite far behind these two.

This shared growth agenda must be the platform over the next decade that harnesses all our power and resources to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, which include the following:

• Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Achieve universal primary education
• Promote gender equality and empower women
• Reduce child mortality
• Improve maternal health
• Ensure environmental sustainability.

This is clearly an ambitious agenda. We have limited resources. This, of necessity, requires government to take decisions, to make trade-offs, to prioritise resources and to plan for the long term. At all the magotla of this Cabinet over the last year, there has been a recurring refrain: do we have the appetite to govern? If the answer to this is yes, which it is, then what is the battleplan to achieve shared growth in the Western Cape? How will we move from the threshold of prosperity into the age of shared prosperity?

The primary terrain for shared growth is the Economy. Increasing the rate of growth in the Western Cape will only occur by maximising the growth potential of key ascending economic sectors such as:

• Call Centres and Business Process Outsourcing;
• Tourism;
• Oil and Gas with its related support services;
• Information and Communication Technology; as well as
• Agriculture.

For the first time this Province has a Micro-Economic Development Strategy (MEDS) that shows how targeted interventions in each sector can expand the potential of that sector. In just these five priority sector we have the potential to create 232 000 new jobs in the economy by 2015. While not sufficient to absorb all the unemployed, we believe it will reverse the trend of burgeoning unemployment and lay the basis for bringing unemployment to under 15% by 2020. The success hereof depends on effective social partnerships with labour, business and civil society.

The terrain of the labour market is the second element in our battleplan for shared growth. Provincial government is not in a position to deal with questions of labour market rigidities.

What we have influence over significantly is the skills base of the labour force. We know that our economy demands more qualified labour with hard technical, engineering and project management skills. These are not skills which come overnight. They require structural and systemic interventions and we have therefore, proceeded to redesign our entire education approach.

This year will see us go to the basics of Education: the Early Childhood Development (ECD) sector. We have set ourselves the target over the next year to begin the process of putting an additional 25 000 children in these ECD Centres, and use the EPWP to train 900 ECD practitioners and 233 ECD assistants so that our children can get a flying start in life. In this is an opportunity for social solidarity and volunteerism. I call on all skilled people to assist in management, bookkeeping, resourcing and in the supply of materials to such ECD Centres.

Already, you have seen our determination to build, equip and staff schools. This is merely a step towards greater focus in these schools as already seen in the Dinaledi Schools with its aim to double the number of learners with Maths and Science by 2008. This year will also see school safety infrastructure at 50 priority schools.

All of these are critical feeders for our revamped Further Education and Training Colleges and the Western Cape is the most advanced in the process to establish six such vocation-oriented Colleges. This year we will spend R170m for their physical upgrading.

At the same time we have had a very fruitful process of engaging the Vice Chancellors of our four universities in the Western Cape on our Human Capital Strategy. While national institutions, they have understood their role in providing the necessary skills for a growing, knowledge-based economy in this Province.

The third element of our battleplan for accelerated and shared growth is in expanding and maintaining our infrastructure - the nervous system of our economy. The President has prioritised investment in infrastructure as the key to ASGISA and we need to position the Province for an appropriate share of the R372 billion budgeted nationally to drive investment and growth over the medium term.

It is infrastructure that makes our economy competitive, ensures social integration and, if handled correctly, makes the Western Cape environmentally sustainable.

World Cup 2010 has emerged as both the catalyst and a milestone for our Strategic Infrastructure Plan (SIP). The backbone of this Plan is public transport. Rehabilitation of key highways will continue, and resealing and regravelling programmes of roads throughout the Province will be prioritised. In addition, 2006 will see the Klipfontein Corridor being started, the Lansdowne Corridor upgraded and the George mobility Strategy implemented.

Such an emphasis on infrastructure will see greater results for EPWP jobs and will see a greater demand for scarce engineering skills. The Minister has boldly recruited 130 prospective engineers, furnished them with bursaries, and sent them off to universities.

The fourth element of the battleplan against poverty must be safe, healthy and integrated communities. Strong communities based on vibrant and loving families is the cornerstone of prosperity. At this moment where and how our communities are do not equip the poor to participate in economic activities and opportunities.

The first intervention has to be in the space economy, and we now have the framework in the Provincial Spatial Development Framework (PSDF), which now requires every municipality to plan for fully integrated human settlements - racially integrated, integrated into the economy, and connected to transport networks. We must have an end to sprawling, low-income settlements on the periphery, far away from all opportunity.

This is the basis for an approach to housing provision in this Province. Under interrogation from the President in our December City Imbizo, it became clear that current levels of housing subsidy are inadequate for the growing housing demand, and that private sector loans would be an irresponsible alternative to subsidy shortfalls.

This Province has to countenance, with our social partners and most importantly the private sector, other bold initiatives. Can we use the state's collective portfolio of property as a leverage to bring gap housing to the market and to use such profit generated to augment the subsidy budget? Is this also not the time to allow the poorest amongst us to benefit from the Western Cape property boom through a development levy - something that is standard practice in many other successful countries?

While these questions are answered, we need to intensify our onslaught on conditions which make life unhealthy, unhygienic, and undignified in over-crowded poor communities and especially informal settlements. Such areas have an immediate possibility of dignity through the accelerated provision of water, electricity and other basic services. Already we are out of the starting blocks to eliminate the bucket system by 2007. Poverty does not have to mean indignity.

A further intervention on this front has to ensure that quality health services are added to the basic basket of social security and welfare services that we provide. On the back of this Province's acknowledged success in the programme to combat HIV and AIDS, we need the Health Department to rededicate the Western Cape to the fight against Tuberculosis and other preventable diseases through a more efficient and caring primary healthcare network.

A fifth element in our battleplan against poverty and underdevelopment has to be the facilitation of strong civic life. Ordinary people are the most important actors in achieving developmental success over the long term. What guarantees such success is when ordinary people are organised and networked into and across community structures both to protect and serve communities.

The early signs of success are there in the wake of our Social Capital Formation Strategy. Across government departments in this Province we are organising and networking people to solve problems which recently seemed intractable: Community Safety, through Bambanani, has shown the fearlessness of networked citizens in the fight against crime. Similarly, Community Health Workers have all but eliminated the ravages of child diarrhoea through community-based oral rehydration treatment while Social Development volunteers have signed up an unprecedented number of children who should be receiving the Child Support benefits. And so we can go on to show how recruiting ordinary citizens and networking them into Agricultural Extension Officers, the Working for Water programme, School Safety Officers, begins to transform society, by tailoring public services to local conditions and maximising development impact.

Our latest innovation of recruiting and training Community Development Workers (CDWs) create the real potential of deepening local democracy and development. They can improve the effectiveness and internal democracy of community-based organisation, be the interface with government, ensure access to public services and make civic life vibrant by support local development projects like food gardens, bulk buying, etc.

During 2006, the major challenges that government must meet with communities are the rising incidence of substance abuse, violence against women and the trauma facing our children who have to find their social identities in such conditions.

The sixth element in our battleplan for Accelerated and Shared Growth has to be around the role of the Second Economy. We have to develop and unleash the entrepreneurial spirit of our people. Our schools do not develop this spirit, and every school should. Our laws constrain this spirit, and within acceptable norms we should open up possibilities for entrepreneurs. Our financial institutions do not support this Second Economy, and we should find alternative while we persuade such institutions to share the risks.

For many without the skills for the First Economy, this Second Economy should be welcoming. We need to strengthen the interventions we have already started. Our Real Enterprise Development or RED Door is popular, helpful, and it must be broadened and made ever more effective. The mobile Red Door will help further with disseminating business information and networking with key institutions like banks, Umsobomvu and others.

Our agricultural department too is gearing up to realise the President's urgency about land reform. In anticipation farmer support services and the farm worker development programme will play a vital role. These have made our Province a leader in land reform.

Our seventh element in our battleplan for growth is to ensure that our growth is sustainable. The last three years have been difficult as this province is in the grip of a drought punctuated by fires and floods and causing untold hardships on our people and environment.

In short, this Province has to come to grips with climate change. We are in the midst of a study into the effects that climate change has and will have on our Province, but what is not contested is that we need alternative sources of water, we need to increasingly harness the potential of renewable energy, we need to jealously improve and guard our air quality, reduce carbon emissions and we need to manage waste in environmentally sound ways.

This is the basis of our PSDF and our approach to golf and polo resorts. We believe that ASGISA in the Western Cape has to be premised on the environment as our most precious resource.

This intent, however, is not to condone endless red tape and bureaucratic frustration. The NIMBY syndrome must not find justification in our intent to preserve our natural heritage. It is for this reason that we aim to reduce both the cost and time of doing business in the Western Cape. This Province is now a pilot for the national government to house all regulatory functions together in the Integrated Law Reform process. It is my hope that decision-making will soon have a turnaround time of 6 months.

The eighth element in our battleplan for Accelerated and Shared growth is a set of Flagship interventions. In the national plan for ASGISA the Western Cape's proposal for the regeneration of the Cape Flats as been accepted. This will shift significantly the focus of public investment into the most neglected quadrant of the Metro.

This regeneration ties with the announcement that Cape Town will play a very significant role in the World Cup 2010. Three months ago we were merely going to be hosts for one group playing first round matches. Now we have the possibility of being the face of the World Cup in 2010, with FIFA wanting as many matches as possible in the city right up to the semi-final levels.

This has resulted in the need for a 70 000 seater, multi-purpose, all weather stadium at Green Point. This does not in anyway detract from Athlone Stadium being completed as a 30 000 seater soccer stadium, at a further cost of R168m.

The massive investment in infrastructure for these facilities and the knock-on effect on our public transport infrastructure will kick-start ASGISA, especially if we also plan for the tourism boom towards, during, and after the World Cup 2010.

In order to build the developmental state it was necessary fundamentally to reorient provincial government towards effective service delivery. This campaign is spearheaded by the reengineering process of the Department of the Premier so that it can fulfil its leadership and policy coordination role. The informing imperative is to consolidate a leadership team comprised of the necessary skills, equity profile and service delivery orientation-the all-important ingredients of a developmental public service. I am happy to report that we are well into this process and should have it completed by June 2006.

Taking its lead from this process, key delivery departments are also undergoing crucial restructuring to ensure optimal focus and capacity to deliver on iKapa Elihlumayo.

We are overhauling the training, capacity building and team development interventions of the government. The Batho Pele campaign will be targeted at critical departments which must enhance the dignity of our people. We are instituting a provincial government monitoring and evaluation system to keep us in line with the national Programme of Action and to ensure service delivery towards the goals and targets of iKapa Elihlumayo.

At the centre of the Provincial Government we are building a holistic governance nerve centre between the Department of the Premier, Provincial Treasury and the Department of Local Government and Housing. This will allow us to align our planning and budgeting instruments and crucially to strengthen the ability of Provincial Government to fulfil its support and oversight role over local government in the Province.

In the State of the Nation Address, the President clearly expressed the national mood of determination to make local government more effective, responsive and accountable over the next few years and improve drastically its 45% approval rating by citizens. In line with this emphasis, I am expected to present a detailed report to the Presidents Coordinating Council by June 2006 on our concrete support actions we will undertake with local government.

Institutionally we will utilise the Premier's Inter-governmental Forum to agree on such a programme. More importantly, the support interventions will be geared to ensure that every one of the 30 municipalities in the province have sound IDPs, premised on credible local economic development strategies and viable integrated human settlement strategies. Effective Local Government is central to realise the Promise of the Age of Hope and to shift us from the threshold of Prosperity into prosperity itself.

Across the country, Premiers have been charged at the last National Cabinet Lekgotla to drive five key performance areas at local government level; backed up by MEC's for Local Government:

1. Institutional capacity development: This entails the production of draft IDPs by 1 March 2006; ensuring that core municipal systems be established; enforcing performance management systems; conducting capacity audits to assess what technical support must be found for municipalities.
2. Improving basic service delivery and infrastructure investment: This focuses on the plans and resources for municipalities to achieve universal clean water and sanitation by 2010; electricity for all households by 2012; and of course the total eradication of the bucket system by 2007.
3. Improved local economic development: This requires that each municipality has a credible and implementable LED Strategy in place to advance the shared growth agenda. Furthermore, we must pay special attention to urban municipalities given that they serve as the anchor points for the national economy in a more globalised environment.
4. Financial viability and management: This requires that the necessary hands-on technical support in municipalities be secured and that the capacity within Provincial Government be improved to play an effective support and oversight role to foster good governance and stamp out corruption and mismanagement at local government level.
5. Community participation and effective Ward Committee: In this performance area the Premier will join Mayors and Ward councillors in grassroots engagement and social mobilisation processes in imbizo campaigns.

These interventions, and the role played by the Department of Provincial and Local Government, together with Premier's and the relevant MEC's, constitute the effective plan to make Local government work better. This will not only ensure good governance, and service delivery, but also ensure the insertion of Local Government into the National Strategies and the Provincial Growth and Development Strategy.

In this Western Cape nothing shows more than an election campaign how fragile is the identity of our people, how callous certain leaders and parties are in their exploitation of people's insecurities and fears, and how political leaders have no qualms in repeating sentiments formed in the most desperate and alienated of situations in the human condition.

All over the world, the reactions and counter-reactions to the depiction of the Prophet Mohammed, the violence that has erupted out of seething anger, the wanton reproduction of the cartoons, the stereotyping of all Danes as culpable, and the irrational exploitation of the anger by the politically desperate on both sides shows us that the anger, the fear and the insecurities emerging from the very identities by which people define themselves, are not tigers we should or can ride.

Just like we must calm the flames of the cartoon anger, we must desist from fanning the flames of local identity issues. The reasonableness with which the President of the Muslim Judicial Council, the Danish Ambassador and the newspaper editors in the Western Cape have dealt with this matter is a tribute to the respect for, and power of, the South African Constitution.

Ten years ago the Constitution was fledgling, and, therefore the exploitation by extremists of legitimate concerns led to a wave of urban terror in Cape Town. This year we will celebrate ten years of the best, most balanced, post-modern Constitution in the world. It is proving its worth at this very moment as South Africans find the balance between competing freedoms and rights, and as South Africans find a bridge of tolerance between the anger of Muslims and the indignation of the media.

We must similarly trust in the ability of the Constitution to carve out a home for all South Africans. You do not have to be white and you do not have to be black. You must simply be what God has ordained you to be. Successive generations of ANC leaders have laid down their lives for this principle that is the cornerstone of our Constitution.

This is what Chief Albert Luthuli said in his autobiography, Let My People Go!

"The task is not finished. South Africa is not yet a home for all her sons and daughters. Such a home we must wish to ensure. From the beginning our history has been one of ascending unities, the breaking of tribal, racial and creedal barriers. The past cannot hope to have a life sustained by itself, wrenched from the whole. There remains before us the building of a new land, a home for men who are black, white, brown, from the ruins of the old narrow groups, a synthesis of the rich cultural strains which have inherited. There remains to be achieved our integration with the rest of our continent. Somewhere ahead there beckons a civilisation, a culture, which will take its place in the parade of God's history besides other great syntheses, Chinese, Egyptian, Jewish, European. It will not necessarily be all black, but it will be African."

What better cornerstone for our Constitution, what better summary for our vision for this Province, what better reason to ensure that this year we will not only celebrate our Constitution with gusto, but we will continue to make it work in the interest of both our unity and diversity.

Today we call to mind in this House the 1956 march by women on the Union Building where they made known their intention that women shall not carry passes. In the lead up to 9 August this year we shall honour them by commemorating 50 years of women's courage, leadership and equality in the struggle for a better a life. They may have marched under the black, green and gold of the ANC, but they did it for all South African women.

We also call to mind those who led us in the uprisings of 1976 and opened the path for the most heroic youth struggles against apartheid. These are people we have to thank for our freedom and the democracy we enjoy. The generations of 1976 were the leaders of the UDF, the foot soldiers in the final phase of the anti-apartheid struggle, and today are in the vanguard of the better life that is being constructed. Leading up to June 16th, this government, together with Western Cape Youth Commission, will work with youth structures to ensure that the lessons of selfless, courageous, patriotic, and untemptable youth will for ever be enshrined in the hearts of emerging generations in the Western Cape as we commemorate 30 years since 1976.

We owe it to our women and youth in this Province that the Western Cape must indeed become a Home for All. As President Thabo Mbeki said earlier this year:

"The Western Cape has its own challenges. But its government has a vision that it calls a Home for All. Indeed, this is correct."

It is, therefore, correct that the best way to celebrate and commemorate the struggles of our women and youth is to prioritise delivery to them this year. The Youth Commission has asked us for a quarter of the year to be dedicated to youth. We say instead, let every day between now and June 16, and August 9, 2006 reverberate with delivery to women and youth.

Like in our 100 day campaign, our Easter delivery, and the Krismisbox, the Western Cape Government undertakes the following Siyabulela deliveries by August 2006:

Minister Ramatlakane will continue the assault on drug-related crimes by youth and will focus police attention on places where drugs, especially Tik, are being manufactured, stored and sold to our youth and by August 2006, the successful actions against such places should be increased by at least 15%.

With regard to women a further 5 Victim Support Rooms will be established at police stations and 400 women counsellors will be deployed to support women who have suffered abuse, violence and rape.

Minister Brown has undertaken to double the number of youth entrepreneurs in the tourism industry from 350 to 700 and will build on our successful preferential procurement campaign by ensuring that the proportion of women procuring from government will increase significantly across departments by August 2006.

By August 2006, Minister Fransman will recruit, train and employ 1000 unemployed youth for trade and entrepreneurial learnerships, and will ring-fence projects and contracts for the most successful amongst them.

Simultaneously we will reserve 60% of road maintenance EPWP jobs for women and as a further contribution to women will upgrade Mowbray Maternity Hospital to the value of R20m by August 2006.

Minister Uys' contribution to youth will be to recruit, train and deploy 4 876 HIV and AIDS peer educators, working with NGOs in communities and classrooms, guidng and counselling young people on the prevention of disease and the adoption of healthy lifestyles. With regard to women, by August 2006, we want 24 508 women between the ages of 30 and 59 to report to their nearest primary health facility for a pap smear as the key action in preventing cervical cancer.

Minister Mqulwana, following our anti-drug campaign in 10 areas, has identified the need to recruit 1000 community-based fieldworkers to support substance abusers after their first phase of rehabilitation to prevent as much as possible the chances of relapse. She is doing so by increasing the substance abuse budget by 40% to a total of R32m.

In reducing poverty for women, 500 women from Langa, Nyanga, Athlone, Gugulethu and Mitchell's Plain will be recruited into the Afro-chic garment industry. To facilitate this, she has budgeted R2m.

Minister Essop has set aside R2m to support 60 sustainable youth enterprises, R4m for women's enterprises, and R3m for natural resource management and sustainable livelihood programmes aimed at both youth and women. She also aims by August 2006 to ensure the coordination of Apex, Mafiso, Umsobomvu and Khula in the Western Cape to support youth and women entrepreneurs better.

Minister Dowry has undertaken to convene 50 camps for 10 500 youth for training in climate change, pollution, bio-diversity and soil erosion. For both youth and women, he will, by August make available 25 bursaries and 40 learnerships for scarce skills in the agricultural sector.

Minister Dugmore believes that the greatest contribution he can make to youth now is to implement the No Fee Schools system at deserving schools to ensure greater access to education and to provide R25m as bursary loans for access to vocational training in FET Colleges. His contribution to women will be the training of 900 ECD practitioners, mostly women, to drive our campaign to get children learning from an earlier age.

Minister Dyantyi will make the Youth Commission very happy with his undertaking that local Youth Units will be rolled out in each of the 5 District Councils and the Metro by August. He also undertakes to recruit 200 youth for learnerships in Disaster Management given the fires and floods we have been subjected to.

With regard to women, Minister Dyantyi has prioritised, within the general Councillor training programmes, that by August 2006, the 50% entry of women into local government will be strengthened with special leadership development training programmes and the recruitment of women in senior management in councils.

And finally, Minister Jacobs has the responsibility to co-ordinate the celebrations and commemorations of the 50th Anniversary of the Women's March and the 30th Anniversary of June 16th. But in addition to this, his drive to get youth involved in sport will now see him prepare for the first time a Sports School for the Western Cape in Kuilsriver.

These deliverables are more signs of commitment from the Provincial Government to create a better life for all in the Western Cape. This is an invitation to all our partners, civil society, labour and business to help move us from the threshold of prosperity to the Age of Prosperity.

Thank You Very Much.