CABINET TAKE-OVER OF PROVINCES: WHAT ABOUT THE EASTERN CAPE? 

The IFP is shocked and horrified that Cabinet did not announce the immediate and complete take-over of the Education Department in the Eastern Cape, when it announced this week that it is placing a number of departments in three Provinces under national government's administration.

Interventions earlier this year from Cabinet to assist the ailing Department of Education in the Eastern Cape have completely failed.

"Government has tried to help the education system in the Eastern Cape but the system remains in utter chaos," said Mr Alfred Mpontshane MP, the IFP's spokesperson on Education. 

Speaking about the dire situation in the Eastern Cape, Mpontshane said, "School infrastructure is on the verge of collapse. The school nutrition programme is not functioning and scholar transport has come to a halt in many areas. Teachers and textbooks are a scarcity, while there is no discipline and accountability in the system."

Mpontshane said that if Government was still searching for reasons to take over the running of the Eastern Cape Education Department, the Department's superintendent-general Modidima Mannya's audit, released yesterday, has provided all the reasons.

"The audit uncovered 101 000 ghost pupils in the Eastern Cape. It costs the state R900 a year to finance each school-going child, meaning the provincial department spent more than R90.9-million this year paying schools for pupils who don't exist. This mean that millions have been wasted which could have been used to assist, feed and transport a larger number of deserving pupils. If this does not amount to gross financial mismanagement and poor governance, then what does?" asked Mpontshane, adding that, "I am stunned and baffled as to why the Department of Health in Gauteng is now under national government's management but not the Eastern Cape Department of Education!"

Mpontshane said that the IFP urges Government to urgently and swiftly take over the administration of the Eastern Cape Education Department.

"The only way to save the Education Department from total collapse and to ensure that the children of the Eastern Cape are afforded their Constitutional right of a basic education in 2012 and beyond, is to take over the running of the Department at national level immediately. We can no longer play Russian roulette with our children's futures," concluded Mpontshane. 

Statement issued by Mr Alfred Mpontshane MP, IFP spokesperson on education, December 8 2011

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