Lord Charles Hotel, Somerset West, Western Cape Province, 20 September 2002
Distinguished Members of The Executive Committee
Distinguished Members of Parliament Present
Director-Generals of National Departments and Provinces
Chief Executives of Aviation And Maritime Companies and Parastatals
Ladies and Gentlemen of The Press
Distinguished Delegates
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is indeed an honour and privilege for me to be accorded an opportunity of addressing the first ever-national search and rescue conference to be held in our country, South Africa. This conference is long overdue and I would like to thank officials of my department for organising this event.
I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to all the unsung heroes who over the past years have placed their lives at high risks in order to save the lives of those in distress.
These ordinary but truly heroic south africans have made our country very proud. It is their selfless acts that have placed the search and rescue programme in South Africa on the world map.
There have been individuals within the business fraternity that have contributed their resources for use by sasar during search and rescue operations. I cannot list all of them by name but I would like to single out a mr. P. Vorster of Letsitele in the George district who has on numerous occasions made his helicopter available for search and rescue purposes.
To these heroes and heroines, who are always willing to lend a helping hand to those in need of such assistance, I want to assure them that their spirit of comradeship and patriotism does not go unnoticed but its being recognised and appreciated by the government and their fellow South Africans.
The South African government is committed to ensure that the search and rescue organisation in South Africa remains a leader in africa. To this end, the government is currently investigating the possibility of establishing a dedicated maritime rescue co-ordination centre.
This is after the South African government was approached by the international maritime organisation to host a regional maritime rescue co-ordination centre. The government has accepted this additional responsibility and in the light of this, government commits itself to the establishment of a dedicated maritime rescue co-ordination centre.
The government is committed to the creation of an enabling environment for the search and rescue function to be provided to our aviators and mariners who find themselves in distress.
The South African Maritime and Aeronautical Search And Rescue Bill was debated by the parliamentary house of assembly on the 12 september 2002 and would soon become an act of parliament.
Once promulgated, the bill would provide the necessary legal framework for the provisioning of search and rescue services as well as legitimise the existing search and rescue structures in South Africa.
The government has acceded to South Africa's association with the cospas-sarsat programme in 1999. This enables the government of South Africa to offer cospas-sarsat services as a ground segment provider. The installation of the local user terminal (lut) and establishment of the mission control centre in Milnerton will see Telkom SA, in the spirit of Nepad, providing distress alert services to the rest of the southern african region as well as certain countries in Central Africa on behalf of my department.
The department is spending millions of rands annually to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of search and rescue communications. During the past year, the department paid an amount of approximately r16 million to telkom sa for maritime and search and rescue information services rendered on behalf of the department.
This only testifies to our commitment of building the requisite search and rescue capability for our country.
The South African search and rescue organisation was on the international map during the helderberg incident that happened approximately 300 km off mauritius on 28 november 1987.
Our co-ordinators were called to be in charge of this search effort in co-operation with the mauritian authorities.
We also gained international prominence during the unfortunate incident involving a luxury liner, the oceanos, which sank off coffee bay on 4 august 1991. All the 571 Greek passengers on the liner were saved from imminent death. This accorded the organisation and our country international recognition and respect.
There were many other incidents where the South African search and rescue organisation was involved in with great success but the incidents were less newsworthy because of the number of survivors involved.
We are respected worldwide and we are considered a leader not only in the Southern African region but Africa as a whole.
One may be tempted to ask, "if we have such a wonderful and world renowned search and rescue organisation, why this conference?"
As you may all be aware search and rescue is done as an over and above function as we don't have a dedicated search and rescue capability such as the American coast guards.
We also have to admit that although we have success stories to tell, there have also been a lot of failed attempts or missions to save the lives of some our fellow aviators and mariners. We therefore have to pause and ask ourselves if these failed missions were the result of deficiencies within our programme. If this is so, what corrective action has been taken to ensure non-recurrence?
There is therefore a need to strive for the maintenance the available limited search and rescue resources within the sasar organisation. There is also a need to continuously assess the capability of sasar and attempt to look out for potential contributors to the search and rescue programme, in terms of service and resources in order to maintain or increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the search and rescue programme.
Consequently, the purpose of this consultative conference is "to economically develop an effective and efficient search and rescue programme by the optimal use of the limited national resources."
All of us present here today have some role to play to make our search and rescue programme effective and efficient. We can contribute in one way or another, whether financially or otherwise, in an endeavor to make the search and rescue organisation in South Africa a force to be reckoned with.
It is for this reason that I would like to appeal to business, particularly the aviation and maritime industry to follow the challenge set by mr vorster and commit themselves in some way to the objectives of the sasar organisation. This would be in accordance with the letter and spirit of the people's campaign, vuk' uzenzele, launched by our president, mr Thabo Mbeki during his address to the nation on 8 february 2002.
There are a number of voluntary organisations within sasar such as the nsri, mountain club of South Africa etc. That depends entirely on donations to be able to continue with their good course of saving lives. These institutions need the financial support of business to survive. Big business could play a role in ensuring that the financial muscles of the organisations remain sound.
Therefore lets join hands so that those that find themselves in an unfortunate distress situation could be saved or could live. For the search and rescue programme to be more effective and efficient the perceived deficiencies within the programme also needs to be addressed.
It is the duty of all of us here today to ensure that solutions are found to the challenges facing the search and rescue programme in South Africa.
I hope that this conference would provide a unique opportunity for participating delegates to face up to these challenges and come up with tangible solutions to these challenges.
All of us present here today must ask ourselves these questions "what's our involvement with the search and rescue programme? Do we have a moral obligation and responsibility to assist those in distress? Is there a role that we could play or a contribution that we could make during search and rescue operations? I express the hope that at the end of this conference all of us will have decided on the contribution we could make to the sasar organisation. I call on all of you to be "friends of SASAR".
I therefore declare this conference open and wish all of you successful deliberations during this conference.
Thank you.