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During an oversight visit to review school readiness in the province, the DA found that the schools were underdeveloped, had a shortage of teachers and limited resources.

The DA will write to the MEC for Education, Sello Lehari, to ensure that schools are properly monitored, teacher vacancies are filled and that schools have enough resources, for the academic year.

Kameel Primary School in Naledi is a small farm school which consists of 53 learners. The school is severely under-staffed.

The school is currently funded by the owner of the farm which the school is built on.

The school experiences water and electricity cuts and has to share limited water with the neighbouring village.

The gardening project which assists with the feeding scheme is mostly dependent on rain and there is no consistent supply of water.

Learners and farm-workers have to share the underdeveloped sports ground.

We also visited Floradene Primary School in Vryburg which lacks sporting facilities for learners.

There are no security guards and the school relies on young unemployed volunteers to patrol and guard the premises. The volunteers are paid for their services with a plate of food.

In Rustenburg at least 58 learners have missed classes since the new school year commenced last Wednesday.

The service provider apparently refused to transport the learners due to non-payment by the Department of Education for his services.

It is unacceptable that learners missed the first few critical days of learning due to the Department of Education’s failure to proactively manage their relationship with the service provider.

The DA rejects the department’s poor explanation that the service provider failed to submit invoices.

It is the department’s responsibility to ensure that service providers comply with all the terms of the contract to transport learners to schools and submit the invoices for their services.

The DA will continue to exercise its oversight role by raising this issue in the Legislature to prevent this from happening again.

Where the DA governs in the Western Cape, the learner transport scheme provides transport to about 57 000 learners. We have strict conditions to bus contracts to ensure learner safety and have put in measures to monitor their compliance. Schools are properly monitored and supported in order to ensure that they have adequate resources to operate.

This is the DA difference which we want to bring to more places across South Africa in 2019.

Issued by DA North West