The Democratic Alliance (DA) Shadow MEC for Education, Khume Ramulifho, conducted an oversight visit at Noordgesig Primary School on Tuesday, September 7, to assess progress on renovations and refurbishments which were supposed to be done at the school.
Joined by the DA PR Councillor for Ward 29 Graham de Kock, Ramulifho was taken by one of the teachers on a tour of the school.
He was not impressed by the condition he found the school in to say the least. The school has a total of 40 classes, all of them made of asbestos.
The only things built from bricks are toilets which, according to the principal, were donated. In the admin block, the ceiling is falling from the roof while some parts of the floor are missing tiles.
Burglar bars have been installed on the roof as a security measure. According to minutes from the site handover meeting which was held at the school on November 20 last year, the project was supposed to be completed on August 27 this year.
That meeting was chaired by Tsholofelol Thibakgoro who is the project manager. Meeting minutes also indicate that the value of the whole restorative and repair project was R17 852 499.99. One of the teachers said the last time the contractor came to the school was in January.
The only thing they did was to remove concrete paving and left the whole place infested with dust. Debris from the concrete paving was placed in the playground, leaving pupils with no place to play during break time.
Thibakgoro said the project is currently on hold and said the decision to halt it came from the Department of Education.
“The department saw it fit to build a double story block of new classes instead of renovating the current structures. About 15% of the money allocated to the project was used and the rest is still with the Department of Education,” she said.
While the project is on hold, pupils continue to be taught in classes made of asbestos which is a health hazard for them. When it’s raining heavily, classes get flooded with water, sometimes leaving teachers with no alternative but to send pupils home. De Kock expressed his disappointment with conditions pupils are taught under.
He said, “We are very unhappy because not only has the principal been kept in the dark but pupils have been severely disadvantaged with the environment in which they have to learn.
“This is a completely unacceptable environment for pupils to be taught under. It is completely unacceptable that a contract of nearly R18 million has seen no progress since November 2014 and the principal has been kept in the dark about what is happening.”
Ramulifho was determined to persue the matter further and take it to the legislature.
“The first thing is that I’m going to present this to the legislature. “My argument is that the Department of education is misleading us or it is stealing money from the community, that’s the only conclusion we can make for now based on what we’ve seen.
“Their (Department of Education) documents indicate that the project started in November last year and was completed in August this year but nothing has been done. Its either the money was stolen or the project was never started,” said Ramulifho.
Department of Education spokesperson Phumla Sekhonyane said the project had to be put on hold because the department has plans to build a new school.
“The application to renovate the school was approved before the current MEC took office. When the current MEC came in, an assessment was done and a decision to build a new school was taken because the assessments showed that the situation is much worse than we thought it was.
“We are now waiting for approval from the Department of Infrastructure Development,” said Sekhonyane.
