With or without Covid-19, Education Department continues to fail learners and educators

20 July 2020

Note to Editors: Please find attached soundbites in English & Afrikaans  from OfentseMokae, MPL. 

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in the Northern Cape is calling on the MEC of Education, Mack Jack, to extend his footprint in the province to ensure that all schools receive equal attention from the Northern Cape Department of Education.

This comes after a recent oversight inspection to the Joe Morolong local municipal area, revealed that Reebone Primary, Thusano Intermediate and GasebonweDantjie Intermediate are some of the schools that have yet to receive their share of the Covid-19 support package.

Not only are schools in Joe Morolong waiting to receive much needed financial support from the Education Department, but there are also schools that are in such a state of dilapidation that they should not be accessed by learners and teachers.

Boitshireletso Primary School in Washington Village is currently using one of the spaces in the school building as a kitchen, staff room, principal’s office as well as a storeroom. It is even more worrisome to note that the school does not even have adequate space to allow social distancing regulations to be adhered to.

The Gasebonwe Jantjie Intermediate School in Ntswelengwe Village, is also in dire need of immediate renovation, as the lives of learners and educators at this school are placed in great danger due to old infrastructure that could see walls and paintings giving in at any moment.

It is unfair for learners, educators and school staff, to have to risk their health and wellbeing because the department is failing to address uninhabitable school premises, for which no financial support is set aside. Not least of all when we are in the midst of winter, and a destructive pandemic.

The DA will submit a letter to MEC Jack, requesting him to ensure that all schools in the Northern Cape receive their share of Covid-19 relief funding and also to urgently respond to the matters of outstanding renovations of dilapidated schools in rural areas.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the current state of education in our province by unearthing the many systematic problems across the educational landscape. We urge the Education Department to let Covid-19 be the catalyst to better support and maintain schools, instead of just waiting for this pandemic to further worsen the current state of schools.

Issued by Ofentse Mokae, DA Northern Cape Constituency Head for Joe Morolong, 20 July 2020