Andy Duffy
The Northern Province is planning to pull the plug on a R240-million school building programme, claiming the cash is needed to pay its education wage bill.
The province has decided that its R4- billion education budget, though the largest provincial education allocation, is still R400-million short of its needs and that the school-building project should be the first in line for the chop.
The decision is a major blow to the national governments attempts to upgrade school facilities. The Northern Province has the worst education facilities in the country, and needs to build at least 14 000 more classrooms for its nearly two million pupils.
But the provincial Department of Education says it has to find the money to pay 60 500 state teachers and more than 7 000 administrative staff. Newly appointed MEC for Education Joe Phaahla has pleaded with other provincial Cabinet members to donate part of their funds to education.
Premier Ngoako Ramathlodi is to appeal to the national Ministry of Education for help.
Without additional funds, the salaries will be paid with the R237-million originally provided by the Reconstruction and Development Programme for school-building. Other targeted cuts include national policy initiatives such as training for the new state school curriculum, Curriculum 2005.
The department dismisses reports that the education budget due to run through to March 1998 will run out by the end of this month. It says salaries are safeguarded and that this years matric preparations are not threatened.
But officials say the issue of forced retrenchments, which remain taboo, must be addressed. The province has frozen new appointments. Officials also want external, independent auditors to take over the running of the Department of Educations finances.
The budget allocated to us is simply inadequate says Sello Lidega, department director for professional services and acting representative. [Minister of Education Sibusiso] Bengu, [Minister of Finance Trevor] Manuel and [President Nelson] Mandela have to look at this thing.
The crisis points to a serious deterioration in the departments fortunes in recent months. It warned in June that its budget was R200-million short. Around 90% of its education budget goes on salaries, leaving little to implement national policy initiatives.
Lidega partly blames the personnel costs on the wage bill of inherited homeland civil servants. Few of the provinces thousands of education administrators have taken severance packages.
The provinces woes are also another sign of the massive gulf between the national Ministry of Educations aspirations and reality at provincial level.
Lidega says the national Department of Education has not been very fair in expecting the province to implement new initiatives while it still struggles with its normal obligations.
A national Department of Education investigation into teaching resources earlier this year found that each classroom in the Northern Province houses an average 44 children, that nearly half the schools lack water and that more than 40% are seriously run down.