Question NW2681 to the Minister of Arts and Culture

Reply:

A reliable response regarding this question is dependent on the availability of the existence of a national sport facilities database that can filter data as per the required variables such

as province, towns, and suburbs, schools, and coordinates of the exact site where the facility is located.

As a department, we have previously made efforts to ensure establishment of such database by trying to mobilise resources required to conduct a facility audit that will, among others, identify locations of all sport facilities in the country, including in terms of province, towns, suburbs, and schools.

These efforts included engagements with provinces to allocate resources from their budgets for this purpose, but budget availability was also a constraint for them. Another effort included submission of a request for R20 million under the second wave of Presidential Economic Stimulus Programme (PESP) to conduct this audit and use it to drive employment creation among young people, but unfortunately that application was not successful.

As a result, national department has not yet conducted this audit and does not have the information as requested. However, it has engaged with Swimming South Africa (SSA) to establish a possibility of availability of this information.

Fortunately, the Federation provided a report for an audit of swimming pool facilities in Mpumalanga province conducted in 2015 which, at the least, give an idea of the minimum

number of facilities that exist in the province. While the other limitation of the report is that it does not provide information to a level of town, suburb, and public schools, it however

provides a total of 26 swimming pools for both public and private schools. Unfortunately name of schools, their towns and suburbs are not provided.