Sir
The DA will call on KZN’s ANC leadership to intervene within the province’s failed Department of Education (DoE) following a disastrous departmental budget hearing earlier today.
The meeting, which saw the KZN Finance portfolio committee grill Education MEC, Peggy Nkonyeni and her officials, showed very clearly that the DoE is unravelling at the expense of learners in the province – a move being fuelled by divisions within the ANC and its alliance partner SADTU.
During today’s hearing it emerged that six years after the department undertook a headcount of KZN’s teachers, the exercise has yet to be successfully concluded.
The exercise was originally undertaken by the department to address the challenge of suspected “ghost employees”.
Meanwhile, the DoE continues to spend R2 billion above the national norm on compensation of education employees.
Departmental officials admitted that the headcount had taken too long.
They admitted to challenges with teacher/pupil ratios.
They also admitted challenges around teacher efficiency in the province, practically acknowledging that the department knows it true staff compliment and that 99% of teaching staff have been confirmed. This contradicts Treasury’s conditional findings which indicate that 600 teachers on the DoE’s payroll remain unaccounted for.
In so doing, the DoE has admitted it has lost the battle with SADTU in this province with the teacher union calling the shots when it comes to effective staffing and the department having no political will to change this.
The DA finds it unacceptable that this poorly managed department has to continually lean on province for financial bail-outs as a result of continued incompetence – this at the expense of other critical departments. We expect the province’s leadership to act.
It is time to put our learners first and political interests second. Our children deserve nothing less.
Francois Rodgers, MPL
