Polokwane - The DA claims it has uncovered millions of textbooks that were meant to be distributed to Limpopo pupils.
The party said the undistributed textbooks and workbooks were found at a warehouse in Seshego outside Polokwane.
“I have today (Thursday) written to the Limpopo acting MEC for Education, Jerry Ndou, to demand that he establish an urgent plan to distribute millions of textbooks and workbooks stuck in a Seshego warehouse,” said DA provincial leader and MPL Jacques Smalle.
He said the discovery was made during his oversight visit.
“This new distribution crisis makes it impossible for the department to meet the deadline of delivering these textbooks on time, to learners who registered late or who have transferred schools since a first round of textbook distribution earlier this year,” he said.
Smalle accused the department of “holding learners’ education back”.
Provincial Education Department spokesman Paena Galane has dismissed the DA’s claims as politicking.
Galane said there was nothing untoward with the textbooks stored in the warehouse.
He said the textbooks had been stored as a surplus to replenish the batch of textbooks that were delivered to schools in December.
“What happens is that some schools enrolled new learners in January. When they tell us how many learners they enrolled, we would distribute to them, and this process is called mop-up,” said Galane.
He said that if the department did not store extra textbooks in the warehouse, it would still have to order them for the mop-up process.
“If you say we must not put textbooks in the warehouse, it means we must order them from publishers, and some learners will have to wait for six months without textbooks,” said Galane.
He insisted that the department had distributed textbooks to all schools in the province.
He said principals were given until the end of last month to submit lists of books they require as replenishment.
Galane said the DA was given an explanation, and it lauded the department for being proactive. “I think they are politicking (by going to the media).”
The department was first hit by a textbook scandal in 2011, when pupils spent more than six months without textbooks.
The province had failed to order textbooks from publishers. Education was among the five provincial departments that were placed under national administration in December 2011 after the cabinet cited maladministration and financial mismanagement.
The Star