Damning Limpopo report

FEARS that Limpopo will again face a school textbook shortage have surfaced after the Auditor-General’s report yesterday showed that the provincial Education Department had failed to acquire half the books needed for the 2015 academic year. “The root causes are that no top-ups were made since the 2013 academic year, a lower rate on book retrieval and the delivery of books was not based on schools’ orders,” Auditor-General Kimi Makwetu said in the report. The department, which is under administration, had also failed to follow an internal management plan for the procurement and delivery of “learner and teacher study material”. The department had also overpaid the South African Post Office by R3.3 million in the 2013/14 financial year, incurred R332m in irregular expenditure and a combined R130m in fruitless and wasteful expenditure. – Sapa