KZN may have 200 000 ‘ghost’ pupils

A total of 113 children died of malnutrition in Gauteng from April 2015 to March this year, the Democratic Alliance said. File picture: Phill Magakoe

A total of 113 children died of malnutrition in Gauteng from April 2015 to March this year, the Democratic Alliance said. File picture: Phill Magakoe

Published Jan 29, 2015

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Durban - About 150 school principals in the Uthungulu district have been charged for allegedly inflating pupil numbers, costing the education department hundreds of millions of rands.

This emerged at the KwaZulu-Natal legislature this week where the finance portfolio committee heard that the district, which includes Richards Bay and Eshowe, has 17 000 “ghost” pupils.

Based on this figure the education department now fears that as many as 200 000 ghost pupils could be discovered once the head count of the entire province has been completed.

In July last year the committee instructed the department to conduct an employee and pupil verification exercise.

This was after the Daily News reported that about 200 000 non-existent pupils were on the books of the province’s schools.

The department was hauled before the committee on Tuesday to give a progress report into the exercise.

According to the department’s report tabled at the meeting, the schools employee verification process began in September in 11 districts and was finalised on October 31. Verification of the 12th district was concluded on December 1 because of “extreme” staff shortages.

Office-based verification began on October 1 and was completed on November 5. So far only Uthungulu district has finalised its pupil headcount.

A team comprising senior officials from various directorates, including the Security Advisory Services, was tasked to handle the process.

On Wednesday education MEC Peggy Nkonyeni said: “If one district has inflated the learner numbers by 17 000, then we could expect to find more than 200 000 ghost learners throughout the province given that bigger districts like eThekwini have not been processed yet.”

The committee also heard that in the financial year 2014/15 the department had dealt with 54 cases of serious offences against teachers and officials.

These cases include sexual harassment, sexual assault and financial mismanagement.

Nathi Ngobo, the department head of human resources, said sexual harassment and sexual assault were the most common offences committed.

He said 12 employees had since been found guilty and dismissed for these offences.

He told the committee that delays in finalising the cases were caused by employees failing to attend disciplinary hearings and instead submitting doctor’s certificates.

Ngcobo told the Daily News that during the same period the department had spent more than R9 million on salaries for the suspended employees. He said most of the 54 alleged offenders were teachers.

Sipho Nkosi, chairman of the portfolio committee, said the number of “non-existent children” in the department’s system meant that millions of rands were involved.

“This has a number of implications to the department. It has implications on teacher allocation, the money allocated for non-existent teachers.

“In the case of schools benefiting from the schools nutrition programme, this also has implications to the funding for that programme,” said Nkosi.

The DA’s Francois Rodgers, MPL, said inflating pupil numbers could cost hundreds of millions of rands.

“Missing from the MEC’s report though is the financial implication of such wide-scale abuse of the system. Inflated pupil numbers would have an impact on the number of teacher posts, the school nutrition programme, textbooks and learning aids.

“It appears that fraud and corruption are endemic within the KZN Education Department. The recent exam marking scandal involving educators and now the news that principals are inflating pupil numbers bear this out,” said Rodgers.

He called for Nkonyeni to put together a plan with timeframes, indicating how she will deal with the current “disarray” in her department.

Daily News

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