Auckland Council's Southern Initiative is urging the government to connect South Auckland homes to the internet.
Photo: 123RF
The organisation's social intrapreneur, Tania Pouwhare, said 20 percent of homes in Māngere, Ōtāhuhu, Ōtara and Papatoetoe were not connected, and many of the remaining households only had connections through their mobile phones.
She said that meant South Auckland people would struggle to retrain and find jobs, especially if there were further lockdowns preventing access to regular courses at tertiary institutions.
"We're going to need to make sure that people in South Auckland have access to not just devices but actually access to the internet from their home and an adequate amount of data to be able to study between lockdowns," she said.
Pouwhare said the need was urgent because forecasts indicated 50,000 people in the area would be unemployed, and others would be in precarious work or jobs that only provided part-time hours.
She said those people would need to be able to connect to the internet.
"We've made the case to government that now is time to turn their attention to how we can work together to make a new economic scenario for south and west Auckland."
