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Something is seriously wrong with the budget for the Department of Basic Education’s (DBE) Workbook Publishing Project.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) wholeheartedly supports this innovative effort to publish 35 million workbooks for 19 000 primary schools in all 9 provinces. But the numbers provided by DBE officials simply do not add up.
In the mid-August presentation to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations, DBE officials reported that they spent only 22.2% (R166.414 million) of a Treasury budget of R750.216 million set aside for the 2011 Workbook publishing programme.
R583.802 million or 77.8% went unspent - a breathtaking figure!
The question is: how did the DBE and Treasury get the figures so badly wrong?
The DBEs explanation is that the R583.802 million should be seen as a ‘saving’: “In-house services were utilized for the development, layout and design of the workbooks”, they explained to the incredulity of the Appropriations’ Committee.
Only the gullible could find it credible that the development, layout and design of workbooks would cost the monumental sum of R583.802 million. A decent publisher would do it for R10 million – with change.
Whomsoever at DBE costed this and whomsoever at Treasury approved the workbooks should be fired for incompetence.
But perhaps there is another, more sinister, explanation.
Could it be that all manner of connected consultants waiting for this rich vein of gravy to emerge were included in the original R750.216 million budget?
Could it be that, when uncomfortable questions were asked, the DBE played it safe by moving the development aspects in-house?
Only by publicly releasing the original workbook budget documents would DBE Minister Angie Motshekga be able to provide a credible explanation for the budgetary blunder.
I have put such a parliamentary question to Minister Motshekga.
Behind inflated budgets lie the sharks and tenderpreneurs angling to make a quick buck at the public’s expense and, tragically, at the expense of learners desperate to get a decent education.