Three depts ordered to sort out transport

THE Eastern Cape departments of education, transport and treasury have been ordered to work together and come up with a plan to ensure the 30 000 pupils not benefiting from scholar transport, even though they qualify for it, are being transported.

The portfolio committee on education has ordered all three departments to work out a budgetary plan to resolve the “non-negotiable” matter of the 30 000 pupils “once and for all”, instead of shifting the blame among themselves.

Portfolio committee chairman Mzoleli Mrara told Bhisho lawmakers it was unacceptable that qualifying pupils still walked to and from school.

“Scholar transport remains in the department’s policy focus area and it is one of the ten non-negotiables . . .

“The implementation of the scholar transport policy must be reviewed to cater for all deserving pupils . . .

“The department of education with sister departments, the treasury and department of transport, and social partners, must work out a budgetary plan to finally resolve the issue of nonbenefiting deserving pupils once and for all,” he said.

Education MEC Mandla Makupula yesterday said: “To us, scholar transport is a support programme, while to the department of transport it is a core mandate. The decision to take scholar transport to the department of transport was that we realised the department was spending too much time on issues like scholar transport and school nutrition and less on our core business of learning and teaching.

“But the reality is that out of about 110 000 deserving pupils we are only able to cater for 80 000 at the moment.

“This then calls for us to work collectively as government to transport the 30 000-plus of our children who deserve to be transported but are not, if we say education is a priority.”

The department of transport has repeatedly said it was unable to transport the 30 000 pupils due to the limited scholar transport budget it receives from provincial treasury.

Two months ago, transport MEC Weziwe Tikana announced a R504million allocation for scholar transport which will cater for 80 000 pupils at 751 schools across the Eastern Cape. The budget remained unchanged from last year’s and again excluded the 30 000 pupils.