The fight to ensure that learners across the Eastern Cape provinces are thought in tructures meeting the basic safety functionality levels has prompted the department of education to step-up its interventions in the Libode District by deploying R160 million to alleviate the baseline of 77 inappropriate and mud structures.
The two fold intervention has seen the district being declared the pilot site for the construction of new schools using new technologies while eradicating the mud schools. This first part of the two fold will include assessing the identified structures, while the second one includes the construction of new schools in this district which has most infrastructure problems. During the process the department will ensure that all the learners from the affected schools are placed in alternative accommodation for them to continue receiving teaching and learning.
Although critics have recently lashed out at the department for its failure to eradicate mud and inappropriate structures especially in the former Transkei region, the department’s Superintendent General, Advocate Modidima Mannya has summoned Education Development Officers (EDOs) and district directors with an aim of concretising the programme with them.
Mannya believes the sense of not understanding how the department operates is the cause of the department being criticized as if it’s not delivering on its infrastructure promises. “People need to understand that the department deals with the basket of services that amongst them is the provision of desks, chairs, transport apart from teaching. People should also know that the democratic dispensation inherited some of the poor school infrastructure from the (former) homelands and 16 years is nothing due to the insufficient budget allocation yearly,” acknowledged Mannya.
The SG also emphasised that the intermediate plan is to also make use of the maintenance budget to help assuage the backlog. “Transkei is prone to disaster far beyond our control hence one would notice that we are working in circles as we build on the other side while disasters are destroying such a good work”, he added.
Beginning from tomorrow, the department will conduct side visits to assess the suitability of the alternative sites. These sites would accommodate all learners from the schools to be reconstructed. “Subsequent to finishing the identified 77 baseline, then, the department will focus on the 395 provincially mud structure costing at R4.1 billion in the next Medium Term Expenditure Framework,” said Mannya.
Mali Mtima
Tel: 040 608 4777
Cell: 084 842 7872
Education step-up its fight against inappropriate structures
Province
