Govt promises to help roadies

2009-07-03 21:14

Pretoria - The government has promised to attend to the gripes of 15 members of the South African Roadies' Association who staged a sit-in at the arts and culture department in Pretoria on Friday.

The undertaking was made by arts and culture deputy minister Paul Mashatile.

The Sara members said they were protesting against the "bad treatment" they had received from senior officials of the department over the years.

"Officials have blocked Sara's unique youth development initiatives, through direct intervention to deny funding and resource support," said Sara president Freddie Nyathela.

Youth-empowering initiative

The initiatives empowered youth from previously disadvantage communities with technical skills to enable them to be sound engineers, stage engineers or video engineers and follow other engineer-related careers in the arts.

"We have also complained to the public protector, who confirmed in his report that we had a raw deal from the department."

Nyathela said the director general of the department had promised to address the issue, but had done nothing.

The protesters halted their action after Mashatile was briefed about their problems during a meeting with their representatives.

"The minister has assured us that our problem will be attended to. We have scheduled a meeting with him on July 23," said Nyathela.

Money for non-development events

Earlier, they had vowed to continue with the sit-in until Minister Luluma Xingwana intervened.

Nyathela charged that department officials were channelling money to non-development events and failing to help Sara financially.

"We do not have the department's support. We got support from overseas while our people [government] pump millions into unregistered organisations," said Nyathela.

The department was not immediately available for comment.

- SAPA