Education activists in protest at Coega
EQUAL Education members descended on the Coega Development Corporation offices in Port Elizabeth yesterday, voicing frustration over the alleged failure to tackle ailing infrastructure at schools.
Implementing agents like the CDC have for several years managed and planned the building of schools on behalf of the Department of Education.
This is a role which Equal Education believes has not been attended to by the CDC, and led to yesterdays planned picket.
Equal Education provincial chairman Luzuko Sidimba said the picket was intended to highlight the grievances raised by members of the movement and to hand over a memorandum of demands aimed at producing accountability for unfinished infrastructure projects.
“There are several issues raised in the memorandum which the CDC needs to account for, including the lack of communication from their side to schools that are listed for infrastructure upgrades,” Sidimba said.
“Vukile Tshwete Senior Secondary School [in Keiskammahoek] is just one school that was supposed get a new building to be completed at least a year ago, but not a brick has been laid yet.
“Schools are given no timeframes as to when infrastructure upgrades will begin or end [and] money is allocated to corporations yet there is nothing to show for it.
“They [CDC] have been in this role for years, yet we don’t see any progress in upgrading infrastructure and there is no accountability.”
Speaking outside the CDC offices yesterday, Equal Education deputy chairman Masixole Booi said the CDC had been allocated R262 446 000 for the 2017-18 financial year to attend to 71 new projects.
“We have given the Department of Education, the CDC and their contractors 30 days to respond to the memorandum. We need to know why these funded projects are not being completed,” Booi said.
The memorandum was received by CDC spokesman Simlindele Manqina, who addressed the crowd outside the CDC.
“The CDC is an implementing agent of the department, whatever involvement there is from the department has contractual obligations.
“Subsequently, some of the schools mentioned here do fall within Coega’s projects,” Manqina said.
“However, for us to action these listed things, we need to get an instruction from the department to do so as we are contractually obligated to them.
“Hence we received the memorandum, while the response to it will come from the department. We will channel all information to the department and they will respond.”
Department of Education spokesman Malibongwe Mtima failed to respond to questions yesterday.