problems
26 July 2006
The last two days I addressed a meeting of the top management of the
Department to register my huge disappointment in the manner in which the
Department handled various issues affecting the Department. These include but
are not limited to the following:
* the dispute with South African Bus Operators Association (SABOA) on scholar
transport
* the leakage of crucial information concerning the so called ghost
educators
* the dispute with South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) on the
suspension of district officials in the Johannesburg south district on
allegations of fraud and corruption
* matters raised by Congress of South African Students (COSAS) during their
chaotic march held last week.
The delay in the transfer of the annual allocated funds to our schools, I
want first to dispel the unfounded reports in the media that I was hauled by
Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa yesterday to explain the current crisis facing
the Department. My meeting with the Premier yesterday had nothing to do with
the issues I am raising with you now. My meeting with him was an ordinary one
with the Premier to discuss matters related to the mid-term report of the
Department of Education. The Premier is having similar meetings with other MECs
as well.
Non payment of bus operators
Last year the Department commissioned a forensic report on the state of the
scholar transport after receiving disturbing reports on the huge
over-expenditure on scholar transport and the alleged corruption within the
system. Jointly with the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC), a forensic
company was appointed to investigate all matters relating to scholar transport.
The Department also appointed a task team to verify all routes as well as the
number of learners utilising the scholar transport service. The Premier also
requested the MEC for Public Safety to conduct an audit on the roadworthiness
of all scholar transport buses.
I now have all these reports. On the basis of these reports I can now
pronounce that: Indeed there was serious financial mismanagement of the scholar
transport budget, I have taken a decision to relieve the current senior manager
responsible for scholar transport of the responsibilities to manage scholar
transport and handed over this responsibility to a new branch with a higher
level manager due to the need to urgently clean the administration and
management of scholar transport scholar transport will from now on be managed
by a Deputy Director-General who has almost 35 years experience within the
Department Education.
Various managers who were responsible for scholar transport within
head-office, district offices and some school principals are about to be
suspended immediately pending the administrative procedures that need to be
followed by our labour relations unit and our legal unit.
We have opened a criminal charge with South African Police Service (SAPS)
Johannesburg central with the intention of bringing all bus operators to book
who defrauded the system. We have been assured by law enforcement agencies that
arrests are imminent.
The dispute with SABOA is now resolved as the service is almost back to
normal except for a few bus operators who believe we still owe them. Yesterday
I took a decision to instruct our legal team to institute legal proceedings
against JCJ buses following their decision to withdraw almost 40 buses under
the pretext that we owe them money. Today various bus operators will take over
the JCJ bus routes until the matter is settled.
May I take this opportunity to extend my sincere apology to all learners and
parents who struggled to go to school last week due to problems related to
scholar transport. I commit myself and the Department that with the new
measures in place I doubt that we will ever find ourselves in a situation where
bus operators are not paid again.
Investigation on ghost posts
As part of our routine check of our systems early this year we picked up
irregular appointments of personnel within our systems without proper
documentation, appointments with incomplete documents and those appointed
without mandates. To this we notified the GSSC who instituted an investigation
that indeed confirmed these irregularities. Their findings confirmed that
indeed personnel were appointed without following due processes and this led to
the appointment of 15 ghost staff members at the cost of R835 766,58.
You can observe from the report that the weekend media reports that these
ghost employees cost us R7 million per month are unfounded and baseless.
We have since rectified our systems and the police are also at an advanced
stage to bring to book all the culprits.
Suspension of senior officials in Johannesburg district early last month we
observed disturbing payment trends in one of our districts in Johannesburg.
Upon inspection, we picked up very disturbing financial irregularities that
involved the awarding of tenders. Four staff members were suspended immediately
we then later reviewed the suspension and the suspensions were lifted except
that of an acting senior manager. Since then members of SADTU have registered a
total dissatisfaction in the manner that the Department handled these
suspensions. They have targeted our Chief Director for districts, Thami Mali,
by publishing serious untested and disturbing allegations and threatened any
official who come closer to Mr Mali with violence. This morning members of
SADTU barricaded our offices and refused to allow staff members to enter our
offices. On Friday, members of SADTU intend to picket outside my office. We
would like to reiterate our stance to deal with all forms of fraud and
corruption within the Department regardless of the membership of the people
involved. We are not going to be intimidated by SADTU or any formation. We are
currently in discussion with the provincial leadership of SADTU.
Disturbing behaviour by COSAS
Last Friday a splinter group of COSAS staged a march to the Premier's office
to protest against lack of scholar transport. We found it difficult to accept
the genuineness of these concerns because at the time my office was in
discussion with another COSAS delegation on these matters. We condemn their
vicious attack on vendors and the manner in which they destroyed property. We
wonder why the police allowed this march to go ahead as we doubt whether proper
permission was granted. We call upon the police to immediately arrest the
culprits involved and we will be more than willing to provide them with the
names of those involved. We are pleased that the real COSAS leadership
distanced themselves from the chaotic march.
Delay in transfer of school fund allocations
We have noted the concerns from our schools that their annual financial
allocations were delayed thus affecting the smooth running of some schools. The
delay was mainly caused by the need to wait for the election of new School
Governing Bodies (SGBs) because these new SGBs are the official custodians of
public school funds. My office has since released information to all our
districts to notify schools that they will receive their funds during the first
week of August 2006.
Conclusion
The events of the past two weeks were indeed unfortunate. I have registered
my complete dissatisfaction on how these matters were handled by the
Department. However, I am confident that we have resolved all these matters and
that the Department is ready to continue with its mandate to provide quality
education to all our people.
May I take this opportunity to thank you all for coming. We hope to rely on
you to reassure our people that the state of education in this province is in
safe hands.
Enquiries:
Phanyasa Lesufi
Cell: 083 256 7933
Issued by: Department of Education, Gauteng Provincial Government
26 July 2006
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government (http://www.gautengonline.gov.za)
