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Since the next groups of learners are expected to return to class in the coming days, the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Northern Cape urges the provincial government to provide regular and reliable public briefings on provincial readiness. The time has come for all relevant members of the executive council to address concerns honestly and to take the Northern Cape into its confidence about the state of provincial schools.

As parents, as public representatives, and even as private citizens who are passionate about the future of our province, we all want to protect our school communities against the potential consequences of the current pandemic. We need clear and credible information from the provincial government as a weapon in the frontlines of the fight.

After all, parents are asked to take an unknown risk with their families’ futures and to entrust their children entirely to the provincial government. But at the same time, the provincial government provides little to no information which can enable any parent or guardian to make an informed decision. We need far more than just the occasional infographic or a late-night Facebook post to support our school communities.

Firstly, we need the MECs responsible for Education as well as COGHSTA and Roads & Public Works to provide detailed reports on progress made to fix infrastructure problems. As the MEC for Education indicated at the end of May, the re-opening of schools required the successful completion of 192 infrastructure projects aimed at repairing lockdown damage or securing sufficient water. In the twenty-first century, it should never have needed a global pandemic for basic infrastructure matters to be taken seriously.

And yet oversight visits paid by the DA since the start of June establishes a disturbingly similar pattern of problematic water provisioning in many different school communities. From Namaqua to the current viral epicenter in Pixkley ka Seme and to the rural regions of John Taolo Gaetsewe, schools are struggling to secure sufficient water levels to ensure sufficient sanitation standards can be upheld.

In part, it is due to disastrous drought management that schools are now left high and dry.

But it also seems as though an unscrupulous tenderpreneur or two may have turned a quick profit from the panic of the pandemic. Delays with delivery and proper filling of water tanks is commonplace. And we are also concerned about reports from schools that contractors did not connect water tanks to central plumbing systems. Which means that water tanks can serve no practical purpose, other than standing as a monument to mismanagement.

We will be following up with individual queries about the individual schools.

And we will leave no stone unturned in building the best case against those who steal resources meant to safeguard our school communities.

Issued by The DA