MBOMBELA – The provincial government’s left and right hands seem to be unclear on what the other is doing. This became apparent over the weekend when the DA in legislature again received conflicting responses on the same matter from two departments.
According to answers to written questions posed by the DA, public schools in Mpumalanga pay local municipalities hundreds of rand in toilet levies per month. This is according to the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) which says that levies in public schools are determined by a uniform fee in terms of municipal land use.
However, the Department of Education is under the impression that no toilet levies are charged by municipalities.
It is not the first time that the party has received conflicting official responses. Last year the department of public works claimed the Office of the Premier had added an overly expensive car to its fleet, while his office responded that it had not, before public works withdrew the answers.
The DA’s chief whip in the provincial legislature said it was extremely worrying. “Either she (the MEC for education, Ms Reginah Mhaule) is very economical with the truth, or her office is misleading her.” The department’s spokesman Mr Jasper Zwane told Lowvelder this week, “Please be informed that the department is not aware of any toilet levies charges by municipalities to schools.”
DA MPL Mr Anthony Benadie said the information received from education showed that 708 schools in the province did not have adequate access to water and sanitation with 15 schools having no toilets at all.
“Quintile 1 to 3 schools, which are listed as no-fee schools, are solely reliant on the department for all monies needed to function yet education claims to be unaware of toilet levies burden that they carry,” he said. “It is unacceptable that the MEC as well as the district offices claim not to know about these levies; especially when she announced that this financial year, the department would spend R202 million upgrading schools’ water and sanitation infrastructure.”
He added that the DA proposed that the two departments agree that no public schools pay levies for sewage, and instead use those funds to address their infrastructure needs. “Exempt schools from paying this, on the proviso that they spend it on other infrastructure,” Benadie suggested.
Cogta did not respond to the newspaper’s questions.
However, the office of the MEC Ms Refilwe Mtsweni has confirmed to the DA that schools can apply to their various municipalities for special exemptions and rebates.
The department states that individual councils can consider these if an application stays inside legislative prescripts and “does not negatively affect the municipal ability to render the service concerned”.
