ENERGY Minister Jeff Radebe officially opened the doors to a custom-built R4-million library for residents of Sea Vista in St Francis Bay.
The state-of-the-art library was made possible by Kouga Wind Farm, who provided the necessary funds, and Kouga Municipality who made the land available.
The municipality will manage the facility as part of their community service portfolio.
Radebe, who firmly believes that renewable energy is going to save the world, said that this source of energy was here to stay.
He continued that the current challenges faced by Eskom “would have been worse”, were it not for the contribution from independent power producers such as Kouga Wind Farm, which contributes more than 280 gigawatts of electricity to the national grid per year.
According to Radebe, he was determined to push forward the growth of the renewable energy sector to “not only fire up our energy, but also to develop the communities where these projects are based.”
He called on the Sea Vista community to take ownership of the library as a community asset, which would help to break the cycle of poverty.
“Education is the future of our children and a library is the fountain of knowledge in a community.
“Treasure it and be its protectors, because our children will depend on it to improve themselves.”
Kouga Wind Farm’s Community Liaison Officer, Trevor Arosi, said the library was a tangible and sustainable symbol of the wind farm’s commitment to development through education.
Arosi said the three-year project created 96 jobs during construction, injecting direct wages of R1.4 million into Sea Vista and that a further R1.3 million was spent on local procurement of materials.
He said St Francis Bay residents and the local Rotary Club had embraced the initiative, collecting more than 6 500 books for the under-resourced community.
A fully equipped computer room will give library users further access to online resources.
“For us, it is extremely important that this library be accessible and useful to every member of this community; therefore it is also wheelchair-friendly and offers a South African Library for the Blind section for the visually impaired,” he said.
