Thousands of NW learners stranded without transport

20 January 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in North West is outraged by the number of learners left stranded so early in the new academic year after transport operators failed to honour t poheir month-to-month contracts signed with the provincial government.

It is disheartening to find that it is again the learner that bears the brunt of the miscommunication between the Department of Education, Department of Community Safety and Transport and the scholar transport operators.

During his 2019 State of the Province Address, Premier Mokgoro committed to clean scholar transport by completing the verification and definition of the routes and also assured the public that current scholar transport tenders will be set aside and replaced with a modernised, more efficient, more reliable and more cost-effective system.

Instead, learners are burdened with walking home due to overloaded or unroadworthy buses or in some instances, learners are dropped more than 2km away or simply not picked up at all.

We will again write to the MEC for Community Safety and Transport, SelloLehari, requesting him to urgently attend to the serious challenges relating to scholar transport by ironing out the poor communication between his Department and that of Department of Education.

We will further request him to decisively deal with transport operators who do not comply with the conditions for contractors as set out by the Department.

Children need to be in safe environments at all times and this includes safe, reliable transport.

Issued by Gavin Edwards, DA North West Spokesperson on Education, 20 January 2020