The Democratic Alliance (DA) in KwaZulu-Natal will today write to National Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga, to request that she intervene in KZN's ongoing education crisis. The move follows the announcement that the Minister intends sending a Ministerial Task Team to the province to investigate ongoing shenanigans within the Department of Education (DoE).

While the DA acknowledges that the Minister is not involved in the day-to-day running of the provincial department, she is still the ultimate custodian when it comes to ensuring the functionality of provincial departments. This said, we believe that she should personally come to KZN and meet with provincial MEC Mthandeni Dlungwane and other stakeholders and try to sort out the Department’s numerous operational and financial crises.

With the confirmation of the Task Team visit, the DA has compiled a list of ongoing key failures within the Department which we expect its members to address. These include:

• The National School Nutrition Programme: this tender was ruled irregular by the Bid Adjudication Panel and set aside, thereby placing the provision of school lunches for more than 1.8million of KZN’s poorest learners in jeopardy. To add to this, the Department also has no idea of the cost for the re-tender process;
• The Learner Transport Policy: the Department is yet to finalise this, taking over this important mandate on 1 April. Despite this shortcoming it has begun advertising multi-million rand tenders for the service. The Department has also not planned for the almost R200 million funding shortfall and the 40 000 additional learners who currently qualify for transport;
• The Sanitary Pad Project: while well-meaning, this controversial project remains dogged with overspending issues, alleged corruption and quality problems;
• Ongoing infrastructure challenges: the Department continues to turn a blind eye to this, leaving hundreds of learners and teachers in unsafe and crumbling schools with cracking walls, leaking or no roofs at all, a lack of water and electricity and severely over-crowded classrooms. Then there are the hundreds of rural and peri-urban schools where children must still use pit toilets;
• Unfilled vacant posts: as a result of the Department’s ongoing financial crisis, hundreds of vacant posts including teachers, cleaners and administration staff remain unfilled. The Department has admitted that almost 2 500 funded posts will not be filled during the 2018/19 financial years. This in addition to the over 3 000 posts during the previous year;
• Annual school funding: many schools have claimed that the Department also only sent through annual funding very late in 2017. As a result they were unable to conduct regular maintenance or buy textbooks which has led to deplorable conditions and some schools being without textbooks and stationery for learners; and
• Senior Management vacancies: the Department still has critical senior management vacancies, including that of Chief Financial Officer, Head of Supply Chain Management, Head of Legal Services and others – all of which are vital in avoiding illegal and irrational decisions and litigation. The posts were allegedly purged by the MEC when he arrived.

The DA sincerely hopes that the new Task Team will prove effective. We have our reservations though after a 2016 Task Team deployed to KZN to probe allegations around the selling of principal posts in the province by Teacher Union SADTU. Despite the damning findings, nothing has changed and the DA continues to receive reports from parents and School Governing Bodies regarding the teacher union’s illegal actions in appointing principals.

Perhaps most alarming in this entire sage is that KZN Education MEC Mthandeni Dlungwana seems oblivious to the crisis within his own Department and more concerned with internal ANC issues in his Harry Gwala Region. This is evidenced by the fact that the Premier has been left to run around and meet with teacher unions, school governing bodies and parent organizations in an effort to avert a crisis.

Education is a vital tool in ensuring that millions of young people are removed from the devastating cycle of poverty and the DA calls on Minister Motshekga to take concrete action. She cannot afford to simply pay lip service to this deepening crisis and must no longer protect an incompetent MEC.

The DA remains committed to ensuring that Education in our province is in capable hands, with individuals who are dedicated to improving the quality of teaching and learning thereby securing the future of our learners.

 

Issued by DA