New Delhi: South Africa today (Jan 11, 2004) sought assistance from India in the form of language teachers in Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati and other languages and materials in order to help children of Indian Diaspora in that country.

"We are working on a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and South Africa which will focus on education", Narend Singh, Minister of Education and Culture in the Province of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa, said at the second Pravasi Bharatiya conference in New Delhi.

He said his Department currently offers study subjects like Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Gujarati and Arabic and a significant number of learners enrolled for these subjects every year.

"Unfortunately at present they are offered only - except for Arabic - in 10 of the 12 Grades of schooling. The reason is that we have difficulty in finding teachers qualified to teach in two final Grades," Singh said hoping that the exchanges provided in the MoU between the two Governments would eliminate the shortcoming.

The draft prepared by India was being studied by South Africa's National Department of Education. It would among other things provide for exchange of research materials, publications, educational literature, organisation of joint research programmes, exchange of scholars, teachers and experts and mutual assistance with IT, mathematics and science, he said.