‘Local communities must benefit’

NORTHERN Cape Premier Sylvia Lucas advised that local communities should benefit from development and economic opportunities, during the Karoo Small Town Regeneration and Regional Economic Development Conference that was held in De Aar.

Lucas stated that while the Karoo was home to some of the most modern human inventions, such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and mega solar energy projects, communities continued to live below the breadline and were affected by food scarcity.

“We are currently in the process of developing our Provincial Growth and Development Plan 2030 and are reviewing our Provincial Spatial Plan . . . to study the economic potential of towns in the Northern Cape,” said Lucas.

She added that small towns were the sources of livelihood for hundreds of people in the Karoo and across the Province.

“Yet these are also the places that are most affected by our current economic pressures that have persisted since the 2009 global recession.

“The decline of the livelihood of small towns, due to economic pressures and the lack of opportunity, produces unsustainable demographic trends.

“It undermines in-build community-based social systems, since it is the young and learned who tend to migrate outward because of the lack of opportunity.

“The old, unwell and too young are thus left to scrape through every day in ways that the promise of democracy sought to wipe away.”

Lucas pointed out that recent studies conducted by the South African Cities Network revealed that urban renewal initiatives sometimes contributed to the economic displace-