9 March 2016
The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Eastern Cape wishes to express its concern on the failure of the Department of Education to spend infrastructure grant, which resulted to more than half a billion being surrendered to the National Treasury to the benefit of other provinces. We are concerned that a huge amount of money goes back to the National Treasury due to the failure to utilise, when we are having such an infrastructural challenges in the schools of the province.
We call upon the MEC of Education, Mandla Makupula to demonstrate what action and measures he has undertaken to avoid this and the consequence measures he has taken for this disastrous under performance.
We also call upon the Premier of the Province, Phumulo Masualle to assess the performance of the current infrastructure delivery model in the province as led by the Department of Public Works. The model as it stands spreads accountability level and other departments are regarded as client department of Public Works, and that includes the Department of Education. The accountability on service delivery is not centralised in line with the centralised service delivery model.
What makes matters worse is that even the lead department, Public Works has on more than one occasion expressed its capacity challenges for the required technical capacity for implementation and monitoring.
We are fully behind any genuine efforts for accountability as long as they are not selective and go deeper to the systemic problems beyond the deployed individual.
Issued by the SACP Eastern Cape.
Contact:
Siyabonga Mdodi
SACP Provincial Spokesperson
Mobile: +2783 358 8070
Office: +2740 635 1042/46
Fax: +2786 268 1281
Facebook: SACP Eastern Cape
Twitter: @SACPECmedia