SANRAL builds roads - and people
The South African National Roads Agency (SANRAL) has placed education as a priority in its community development programme, the agency announced today.
Education remains the highest public priority in South Africa, an approach which is supported right across all political parties and civil society groupings. Evidence of this is the fact that a fifth of this year's national budget is allocated to education and related services.
SANRAL is fully supportive of this thrust. "We don't just build roads, but people too," says Heidi Harper, Corporate Services Executive.
"And we do this over a wide range of activities - employment equity and transformation, talent management, training and development , bursaries, scholarships, internships, preparing learners for university studies and supporting three chairs at universities," Harper explains.
During the last financial year the agency offered scholarships to 179 school learners and bursaries to 70 students at South African universities
All SANRAL bursary students are offered vacation jobs to expose them to the work environment of the company while still studying.
The road agency's educational reach goes further - it has had a scholarship programme since 2008 which seeks to develop core mathematics and science talent with an eye to drawing the learners toward an engineering future.
SANRAL also provides internships to engineering students to facilitate the attainment of their degrees and to provide them with work experience. It will also continue to fund the Chair in Pavement Engineering at the University of Stellenbosch and the Chair of Transport Planning at the University of Cape Town. The agency also funds the Maths and Science Chair at the University of Free State.
At tertiary level, SANRAL also cooperates with the University of the Witwatersrand in supporting about 200 academically talented learners from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds to increase their academic, social and psychological preparation for admission to and success at local universities.
"True, SANRAL build roads - but people are top of our priorities," Harper says.
Issued on behalf of SANRAL
For further enquiries kindly contact
Charmaine Khumalo
Meropa Communications
Tel. (27 11) 506 7300/7395
Email: Charmainek@meropa.co.za
Website: http://www.meropa.co.za
| 
RSS
