Parliament - A proposed commission of inquiry into transformation at universities and free education would be a waste of time, the Democratic Alliance said on Monday.
Briefing journalists in Parliament, DA MP Belinda Bozzoli said President Jacob Zuma's announcement at the weekend of a possible inquiry was “an attempt to divert attention away from the urgency of the immediate issues”, including where government was going to find the R2.7 billion needed to fund the shortfall of zero percent fee increases for 2016.
“I didn't see any reference anywhere to actually finding the money,” Bozzoli said.
“The commission of inquiry is again pulling the debate very broadly into issues that have been dealt with numerous times by the department of higher education and training and into which there are already two task teams set up - one by President Zuma and one by Minister Nzimande - both of which are looking at precisely this issue.”
Bozzoli said government needed to address the shortfall problem of how universities would be expected to function without the fee increases it banked on.
“Universities without reserves are likely to collapse with insufficient funds to pay their expenses by the first of January,” Bozzoli said. The party is proposing reprioritising funds in the budget to fund the shortfall.
“Specifically, we propose shifting R720 million from the department of international relations and cooperation allocated for the impact of the depreciation of the rand on foreign currency denominated expenditure for foreign missiosn and we propose shifting that...to the department of higher education and training,” said DA MP David Maynier.
Maynier also proposed shifting the R2 billion from the sale of government's stake in Vodacom, earmarked for the Brics New Development Bank, to the department of higher education and training.
ANA
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