POLOKWANE – “The delivery of textbooks to schools in Limpopo is progressing well and I am satisfied with the work currently being done.”
These were the words of education MEC, Thembi Nwedamutswu, after she visited warehouses that housed textbooks in Seshego and Polokwane.
She visited these warehouses to monitor the progress in textbook deliveries in the province.
For the past two years, Limpopo had been plagued by textbook delivery problems and Nwedamutswu said she wanted to ensure that each school in the province received the correct books.
She explained that all textbook deliveries were done on the basis of the information that the department received from schools.
“The deliveries are done against orders that were signed off by the school principal and the education circuit and district managers.”
Nwedamutswu said the deliveries would be verified when the schools opened next year, as learner migration affected the number of books that schools needed. She said any shortages would then be taken care of immediately.
According to the MEC, the textbooks would be delivered by the Post Office.
She said the recent Post Office strikes would not affect the deliveries, because the Post Office committed itself to complete the deliveries before the end of the year and increased capacity accordingly.
“The department spends large amounts of money on text books in a bid to ensure that every learner had a text book for every subject in every grade,” she said.
Nwedamutswu said the department experiences problems in retaining en retrieving the textbooks from the learners at the end of each year and that meant that a large number of these valuable resources were not available for the next year’s learners.
She emphasised the importance of schools’ reports of missing books.
The MEC’s positive outlook on the textbook delivery schedule in Limpopo came despite an Auditor-General report that was made public last week, that shows the department failed to acquire almost half of the textbooks needed for next year.
“The root causes are that no top-ups were made since the 2013 academic year, a lower rate on book retrieval and the delivery of books was not based on schools’ orders,” AG Kimi Makwetu’s report read.
The report further mentioned a possible repeat of the 2012 school textbook crisis when many Limpopo learners only received their textbooks towards the end of the school year.
According to education spokesperson, Paena Galane, the MEC was satisfied that the situation was under control, despite the damning findings of the AG.
Galane said Nwedamutswu said she had seen the true state of affairs on her visit to the warehouses and that was why she was positive that all schools would receive all the textbooks that they needed on time.
