GDE consistently fails to spend its infrastructure budget

19 November 2019

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has once again failed to spend its allocated infrastructure budget.

This was revealed in the department’s second quarterly report for the 2019/20 financial year.

According to this report the department has only spent 24% of its infrastructure budget instead of the target of 50% which should have been spent at this point.

The department was allocated an annual infrastructure budget of over R1,9 billion and they should have spent over R974 million but only R476 million has been spent to date.

The department has failed to meet half of the yearly targets including the following:

Only 42 additional classrooms for existing public ordinary schools were built against a yearly target of 175 classes;

Five additional specialist rooms were built in public ordinary schools while the yearly target is 30 rooms;

One new school was completed and is ready for occupation compared to the yearly target of six schools and

Five new or additional Grade R classrooms were built in the period under review compared to the set target of 60 classrooms in this financial year.

It is completely unacceptable for the department to be consistently underspending on its infrastructure budget, yet school infrastructure has been deteriorating, aging and classrooms are overcrowded.

The environment in many of our schools is not conducive for learning and teaching.

The fact that this department consistently underspends on its infrastructure budget clearly indicates that it is not capable of delivering adequate school infrastructure in this province.

I have asked questions through the portfolio committee and expecting answers from Gauteng Education MEC, Panyaza Lesufi to ascertain why this department is failing to spend on its infrastructure budget and what measures are in place to ensure that this department spends its allocated budget.

Issued by Khume Ramulifho,DA Gauteng Shadow MEC for Education, 19 November 2019