The Western Cape government will spend R24 million on extra after-school centres over the next three years.
|||Cape Town - The Western Cape government will spend R24 million on extra after-school centres over the next three years.
Cultural Affairs and Sport MEC Ivan Meyer said the success of the programme was so phenomenal that four more centres would be opened this year.
The locations of the new centres are yet to be decided. This will bring the number of the facilities - known as mass participation, opportunity and development (MOD) centres - in the Western Cape to 181.
MOD centres, which provide after-school sport, life skills and art programmes for pupils, were first opened in 2010 as an “alternative” to keep pupils occupied after school and “off the streets”.
In a response to a parliamentary question by DA MPL Mark Wiley, Meyer said 177 MOD centres were “open and fully functional” and that four more would be opened in the new financial year, starting next month.
He said the centres covered the province’s eight educational districts and that the programme would be expanded over the next three years.
In his budget speech this month, Finance MEC Alan Winde announced that the programme would receive a R24m “boost” over the next three years.
“In the coming financial year, we will strengthen 32 of the province’s best-performing MOD centres with additional staff and sport coaches,” he added.
clayton.barnes@inl.co.za
Cape Argus