Daily Dispatch

State fails rural schools of shame

HOW much longer must pupils from this province be on the receiving end of poor service from the government?

Just last year, the education MEC Mandla Makupula admitted they had failed to spend more than R500-million earmarked for infrastructure at schools.

The budget was part of ring-fenced funds from national government meant to ensure all pupils in the province, especially the rural poor learn from safe structures with access to clean water and electricity.

However, earlier this year, Makupula vowed that such a calamity would never occur again. This meant that more than 400 Eastern Cape schools which lacked such basic services at the time, would remain in the same conditions of squalor because of a failure by the department to spend.

Around the same time, hundreds of pupils of Nelson Mandela Bay Metro stayed at home for almost three months while their parents demanded that teachers be brought in to fill the vacancies at the schools.

But just when everyone thinks the provincial department of education has turned the corner, we discover that the department will not be able to replace more than 340 unsafe structures (read mud schools) by next year, as they had initially promised. Instead they have asked for a five-year extension of the 2018 deadline.

This despite R7.9-billion of the R11-billion budget for replacing the schools having been spent. The report revealed that only 180 of the 530 mud and unsafe schools had been replaced, while 50 were under construction with only a year to go, as per the set deadline.

But it would be unfair to blame Makupula or the provincial government for the latest mishap as the building of the schools is the competence of the national Department of Basic Education.

It is Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga who should take the rap for the failure of her department to fulfil their commitments.

The government has known of these structures as far back as 2011 when they gave a 2018 deadline to eradicate them. So they must have known that this target was achievable.

But as it always happens with the government – especially where poor people are concerned – they have once again failed ensure the safety of our vulnerable pupils.

All along we were made to believe the government would meet its target. It took a visit by the provincial legislature’s oversight committee to reveal that the schools would not be completed by next year. Instead they asked for an extension to 2023.

By his own admission, the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Development Initiative’s (Asidi) implementing agent Albert Gumbo said the target would not be met. He blamed poor performance by the contractors – adding that bad roads leading to the sites and labour unrest on some sites had contributed to the delays.

But someone must be held accountable for not spotting these delays early enough. While they may be poor and vulnerable, our rural children also deserve a “a better life” that had been promised by the government.