Lack of water and sanitation remain serious challenges in some rural schools in the Eastern Cape, almost two years after the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) called for government intervention. The school buildings at Lagrench Secondary School in Matatiele are so dilapidated that school management fears for the safety of learners.
In its 2016 Taking Parliament to the People programme report, the NCOP expressed “grave concern on the behaviour of the Eastern Cape provincial education department in not taking urgent necessary intervention at the school, despite an approved budget for school infrastructure development”.
The NCOP recommended that the department submit an infrastructure plan for the 59-year-old school, which must include water provision and sanitation plans.
This week an NCOP delegation visited the Lagrench school as part of the report-back session, to follow up on recommendations made during the 2016 visit. Delegation leaders Messrs Dumisani Ximbi and Phello Parkies were not impressed to discover that the situation at the school was unchanged, apart from some mobile toilets and a security guard at the gate, provided by the department.
“There is not much change, except for the prefabs and the mobile toilets. It is not what we expected,” Mr Ximbi said.
Mr Parkies blamed the situation on a “lack of urgency” by provincial Department of Education officials. “There is no sense of urgency here. It takes two days to erect a borehole and costs less than R30 000 and here you tell us about a tender since 2016.
“Service providers and implementing agents are just milking the government. They are after money and nothing about our aspirations as a country,” he said, responding to reports that the mobile toilets fall over when it is windy.
He described the situation in the Eastern Cape is “very hurting” and gave the department two months to fence the school, another recommendation from the 2016 report which was not implemented.
“Within two months this school must be fenced. We also heard that the province was taking money back to the Treasury after failing to spend. That is unacceptable when we have such a huge infrastructure backlog in the province.
‘It is very bad that we have funds returning Treasury, yet there is a need for services. Maybe we need the Auditor-General and National Treasury to come down here and conduct workshops. Underspending is very bad and has a negative impact on service delivery.”
Education District Director for the Alfred Nzo District Mr Lungile Mthatyana told the delegation that the issue of water was a problem in a number of the schools in the district and that boreholes were being installed in some schools.
“Schools are buying water from the district municipality and are charged exorbitantly for that service. We feel schools should not be charged huge amounts for such services as they are non-profit organisations (NPOs),” he said.
Mayor of Matatiele Local Municipality Councillor Momelezi Mbedla said selling water to schools was part of the district’s revenue enhancement. He added that an arrangement between the municipality and the provincial Department of Education is needed on the issue of schools being NPOs.
There was some positive news. A R54-million infrastructure project is under construction at Maluti Senior Secondary School, as a result of intervention from the NCOP during the 2016 Taking Parliament to the People programme. The reconstruction of the school follows NCOP recommendations to that effect in the 2016 report. The NCOP recommended that the school be demolished and rebuilt after discovering that the buildings were dilapidated and posed health and safety hazards to learners and teachers.
So impressed were members of the NCOP by the developments that they labelled it “a legacy project of the Taking Parliament programme”.
Sakhile Mokoena
14 March 2018
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