Schools lose out on R415m in funding

Department fails to spend portion of grant for fixing, building infrastructure in province

NEEDY schools in the Eastern Cape have lost hundreds of millions of rands meant to build or restore their infrastructure. It emerged this week that the Department of Basic Education – tasked with building schools – had failed to spend R415-million of the R1.57-billion grant allocated to the province in the 2017-18 financial year.

According to the division of revenue amendment bill, the Eastern Cape was the only province that forfeited some of its budget.

The amendment bill was presented to the provincial portfolio committee on finance by the Treasury and the National Council of Provinces in Bhisho on Wednesday.

DA MPL Bobby Stevenson said the committee heard the expenditure shortfall was due to delays in appointing contractors and reappointing contractors where the services of under-performing contractors were terminated.

The committee was also told of delays in finalising the merger and rationalisation of schools.

The Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (Asidi), a government project designed to eradicate mud, inappropriate and unsafe schools across the country, blamed the weather and the terrain where the contractors worked for the delays in building. Asidi spokesman Alfred Gumbo said it had built 136 schools in the province, but the last financial year had seen an increase in the challenges that “beset the built environment”.

“Our sites are in deep rural areas and the road networks are not always conducive to the transportation of heavy loads during rainy weather,” he said.

“Community-led disruptions of sites and on-site industrial action, as the economy continues to bite, has been a particular challenge for the programme.

“This has been compounded by poor contractor performance in instances.

“The time that is taken to terminate and replace a contractor is long because of the due process that must be followed when such cases occur and this has a marked impact on expenditure.”

Yesterday, finance portfolio committee chairman Xolile Nqatha said he had not attended Wednesday’s meeting.

He referred questions to ANC MPL Fundile Gade, who also declined to comment.

Stevenson said: “The ongoing under-expenditure on education infrastructure in Eastern Cape schools by the national Department of Basic Education is not only a violation of the basic rights of learners, but also denies them a leg-up on the opportunity ladder.

“Every year since 2009, with the exception of one year, the national department has failed to spend all of the money. This contributes to the structural poverty that grips the Eastern Cape.”

Education expert Professor Susan van Rensburg said this was becoming a pattern where the education department was concerned and it had been happening for a number of years.

“If there was accountability, then none of this would be happening,” she said.

“Officials in the department should have established a longterm plan ages ago of what is going to be allocated where and how it is going to be spent when they get money from the Treasury.”

Van Rensburg said even though the national Treasury allowed the department freedom to spend the money however it wished, it should hold the department accountable.

“If we don’t improve the classroom situation, we will continue to have mediocre results in the province,” Van Rensburg said.

In May, the department said the province had an infrastructure backlog of R52-billion.

To address it, it would need about R6-billion a year for the next 17 years.

A month earlier, lobby group Equal Education released a report after visiting 60 schools in seven districts in the province.

It found at least 17 operated in outright violation of the law in terms of constitutional norms and standards for infrastructure.

CRUMBLING school infrastructure and illequipped classrooms are nothing new to the Eastern Cape.

Thousands of pupils, along with their teachers, have, over many years, been forced to try to navigate their school careers with the huge disadvantage of being taught in dilapidated buildings and without the necessary tools.

An absence of desks, broken windows, squalid ablutions – among a litany of drawbacks – are simply not conducive to a stimulating learning environment.

And this applies just as much to institutions in poorer urban areas as it does to those in rural parts of the province.

It’s not just so-called mud structures that are the problem, it is schools in towns and cities which are poorly maintained, inadequately supplied, or have become the targets of vandals by virtue of where they are situated.

This is why the continuing failure by the national basic education department to spend the infrastructure backlogs grant for the region flies in the face of promises to tackle our pitiful matric pass rate at the foundation phase.

For the department to underspend – and consequently lose R415-million of a R1.574-billion allocation – shows a glaring indifference to the plight of our struggling schoolchildren.

Apart from lagging when it comes to the rationalisation and merging of schools, at the root of this non-spending bungle are delays in appointing contractors and having to re-appoint others when the first lot didn’t get it right.

This just reeks of administrative apathy.

In a sluggish economy where SMMEs are vying for their fair share of work, surely it is no mammoth task to get reputable contractors on board and make absolutely certain they are up to the task before letting them get on with it.

It makes simple business sense – but then, when was that ever in oversupply when it comes to bureaucratic corridors?

Effective forward planning can largely solve such matters, but of course it’s a much more embedded obstacle that is at issue here: lack of accountability.

Until our provincial leadership fully addresses that inherent malady, there is little hope.