MPH / Department of Public Health / See the attached abstract below

Thesis (M.Dev.) --University of Limpopo, 2011 / The government poverty alleviation programme in the form of social welfare support grants and free basic services have been going on over the past decade. This prompted the research into the study which is aimed at the investigation of the implementation of the government social welfare support and free basic services in the Mapuve village, in Greater Giyani, Limpopo Province. The study was designed as a case study within a qualitative framework. The simple random method, which is a probability type of statistical sampling approach, was used in the selection of respondents. Closed and open-ended questions were used to solicit information from the participants in the study. The study discovered that the implementation of government social welfare grant and free basic services in disadvantaged communities represented the realisation of their socio-economic rights as enshrined in the South African constitution. Mapuve village is one of the villages with a huge backlog of service delivery in Greater Giyani Municipality. The municipality „s inability to provide every applicant with an RDP house is the major contributing factor to the different views and perceptions that people held towards the allocation of RDP houses. The assessment of the key level of services in the dwelling of respondents painted a deplorable situation in the village. None of the respondents had free basic services; that is, water, sanitation and refuse removal in their dwellings and in the communities. Electricity as one of the free basic services is found in one portion of the village. The perceptions of community members towards the government social welfare grant and free basic service at Mapuve Village point to frustration, anger and dissatisfaction towards the services of the government although to some extent, the social welfare support has contributed to poverty alleviation. In view of the absence of free basic services in the village the respondents complained that the social grants are inadequate in meeting their needs because they also use the grant buy paraffin/electricity and water which are supported to be free basic services. Therefore they called on the government to increase grants to people in areas where free basic services are inadequate.

This master thesis deals with application of Markov processes in analysis of reli- ability of complex industrial systems. We describe a general algorithm whose input is a special form of a failure tree, which describes reliability of a certain system, and whose output is a Markov process, which describes evolution of reliability of the given system in time. We assume exponentially distributed time to failure and reparation time of components of the system. The new model of reliability analy- sis, which uses a Markov process describing the given system, enables to consider dynamical evolution of the system and reparation of components when probability of the system failure within the time interval is computed. Moreover, unlike in the classical reliability model, which uses only failure trees, the new model enables to compute, for example, probability distribution of the functionality-determining states of the given system in the phase of steady running, mean time to a failure of the system or probability that the system fails for the whole time period of the length h, h > 0. The procedures how to get these indicators of reliability are described in this thesis in detail. All theoretical findings of this thesis are applied to two concrete subsystems of nuclear power plant Temelín and further, there is an...

The South African government is obliged to render basic services for the people through local government municipalities. These basic services include among others the development of adequate roads, clean water and electricity. The responsibility of the delivery of these services was given to the municipality after the 1994 general elections, with the belief that it is the government that is closer to the people on the ground than the national and provincial governments. The issue of the provision of quality roads in rural areas of South African still remains a critical challenge. The issue addressed in this study is the provision of quality roads provided in Polokwane Municipality. The study focused on the implementation of roads infrastructure development project in rural areas of South Africa and the provision of roads in the rural areas of Polokwane Municipality in Capricorn District, with a special focus on the provision of roads in the rural villages of Thabakgone, Komaneng, Segopje and Ga-Molepo. The study used data collection instruments such as interviews, questionnaires and supporting documents, such as Polokwane Integrated Development Plan and relevant scientific articles to collect data in the four selected villages. The findings of the study revealed that the provision of roads infrastructure in the municipality is of substandard quality, and that the provision of quality roads in the areas is required.