Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela announced in her recent State of the Province speech that the province will appoint additional 932 maths and science teachers. However, finding the right people for the job remains a challenge.
The provincial department of education will set up a database — including information on unemployed teachers — to help find potential teachers.
Departmental spokesperson Loyiso Pulumani said it is difficult to recruit teachers for rural schools as many do not want to work in rural areas. The department is even looking at recruiting teachers in other Southern African Development Community countries, and will consider employing retired and temporary teachers.
A lack of science and maths teachers is not the only problem in the Eastern Cape; infrastructure remains a problem too.
Mud structures still accommodate about 189 700 learners in the province. Said Balindlela: ”We are fast-tracking the rebuilding of the 40 worst mud-structure [schools] in the province, but we acknowledge that much needs to be done to address this need.”
The school nutrition programme has in the past collapsed amid allegations of maladministration, but Balindlela said in her address that the number of learners benefiting from the programme had risen from 948 574 to 1 342 000 in 2007.
A Public Service Accountability Monitor study last year revealed that only two of eight Eastern Cape schools visited had meals delivered at times stipulated in service-level agreements between the education department and service providers.
”Balindlela simply ignored the real problems which have beset this crucial programme, and consequently said nothing about the steps put in place to ensure that hungry children do, in fact, get fed according to the aims of the [school nutrition programme],” said Derek Luyt, media and advocacy head of the monitoring body.
South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) provincial secretary Mxolisi Dimaza said the premier’s address fell short of what the union had expected.
”A lot of money was returned last year to the National Treasury,” he said. ”The province has no interest in education, and the national department must intervene. We are not happy with way the premier has handled the issue of school nutrition. Kids are still starving and the premier has failed to release the forensic report. What is it that the premier is trying to hide at the expense of starving kids?”
There are other issues that the premier failed to tackle in her address. While she stated that R62-million has been budgeted to train 33 453 administrative employees, she mentioned nothing about critical skills shortages in major departments such as health and housing. The department of health had a vacancy rate of 34% last year, with empty seats in some of the most critical positions.
In March last year, the health department introduced ”Project 5 000”, which aimed to recruit 5 000 health professionals over three years. Yet the provincial hospital services programme alone had more than 6 000 vacancies — over and above the other 11 500 departmental posts that remained unfilled. During the 2006/07 financial year, the department recruited 3 500 health professionals, but in the same period 1 700 left.
This year, Balindlela made no attempt to give an accurate assessment of progress made in the health department recruitment and retention strategies — or of the achievements of Project 5 000.
Luyt believes that to address the issue of mismanagement in the province, discipline is needed and not only the audit intervention plan that has been put in place.
”Furthermore, if Premier Balindlela is serious about improving the fiscal governance, transparency and accountability of her government, then she needs to act on the Pillay commission, commissioned by her to investigate financial mismanagement in the Eastern Cape between 1994 and 2004. She has sat on it for far too long.”