UNDER-Spending is Hurting Education

This is South Africa’s shame!

 

The South African Eastern Cape Department of Education has under-spent R139-million allocated for school infrastructure development for 2006/2007! … While the pupils in rural areas:

·         sit on tree stumps,

·         cram 251 pupils into three crumbling mud huts with only 15 desks between them,

·         do not have working toilets,

·         have no safe way of crossing rivers to get to school,

·         have no storage facilities to store books and equipment,

·         have to put up with a school building that is structurally unsafe.

These types of conditions are causing a high failure rate.

 

Now let’s do the math:

The Education department estimates that it costs about R5-million to erect a school. (I doubt it costs that much! You can build a fairly large “luxury” house in those areas for about R500,000 – so you should be able to build a sound, simple rectangular building with a number of classrooms, an administration office, and safe toilets, for about R1-million! IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE FANCY!!! JUST FUNCTIONAL! – I think someone is padding the figures in the hopes of making a huge profit!)

 

Even at that ridiculous price, the Education Department could have built about 28 dearly-needed schools. At the more realistic cost of R1-million, they could have built more than 130 safe schools.

 

I think it’s time for the government administrators to get off their collective rear ends, and do something that benefits the community instead of themselves!

 

When they eventually do build the schools, they can spend a few pennies in comparison, to give the parents of those pupils in rural areas, a concise summary of their children’s school progress report. School Report Services (www.schoolreportservices.com) has all the details.