Pretoria - It remains the prerogative of Cabinet to revoke the intervention in terms of section 100(1)(b) of the Constitution from the five Limpopo provincial departments.
The five departments were placed under administration by national government in December 2011 due to maladministration and financial mismanagement.
The inter-ministerial committee headed by Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene meant that national government issued directives to the province under section 100 (1) (b) of the Constitution in the province to section (100)(1)(a).
On Wednesday, after reports that government and Limpopo have finally signed an agreement to end the intervention, the Department of Basic Education said it can only be Cabinet - with the concurrence of the National Council of Province - that can pronounce on the status of the section 100(1)(b) intervention in the Limpopo Department of Education and its four sister departments.
“The Administrators seconded by Cabinet to the five Limpopo provincial departments are still in those five departments, until Cabinet determines otherwise. The choice for the Administrators to leave those five departments is definitely not theirs but that of Cabinet.
“In a nutshell, it is the prerogative of the relevant authorities to revoke the intervention in terms of section 100(1)(b) of the Constitution from the five Limpopo provincial departments,” the department said.
Section 100(1)(b) was invoked in the Limpopo Department of Education due to gross mismanagement of funds to the extent that the department was almost R1.2 billion in the red.
Forensic investigations that followed showed that senior officials in the provincial department were allegedly responsible for gross mismanagement. According to the department, officials are still under investigation.
With regards to the Learner Teacher Support Material (LTSM), the department said procurement in the past was left in the hands of a managing agent that was paid a percentage of the value of the orders.
“It stands to reason that the greater the quantities of orders the greater the percentage of commission. It also stood to reason that the greater the price of the book, the greater the commission.
“Even more so was the fact that the province was purchasing also entire consignments of new books each year due to extremely low or almost nil retrieval of books. This effectively meant that almost total quantities of books were purchased each year, thus benefitting publishers and the managing agent alike.”
With the invoking of the Administration, the entire procurement process was revised.
The provincial department, through the office of the Administrator engaged in negotiations with publishers to reduce prices.
According to the national department, publishers agreed to lower prices to the extent that even the most expensive priced books were submitted with lower prices than the lowest price books on the National catalogue.
For the 2015 school year, given the inherent problems in the province, a decision was taken to procure 20% of Grades 1-12 textbooks, despite indications being that retrieval for the previous two years was as high as 90%.
To ensure credibility of orders from schools, provincial department with the approval of the Administrator, requested school principals to complete orders on CDs and hard copies. These were signed off by the school principal, circuit and district managers.
The orders were then uploaded onto an electronic system of the South African Post Office, a system that was initiated by the Administration on advice from the South African Human Rights Commission.
“The department agrees that the upload of orders showed that in excess of 4.3 million orders were requested from schools. It however would have been irresponsible for any department not to have done any due diligence on the orders from the schools, especially given their credibility in the past.”
The analysis of the orders showed that some schools orders were as much as 50-60% of learner numbers; schools were ordering teacher guides for learners; a large percentage of the orders were for graded reader packs for each learner instead of ordering packs per class.
After analysis the department placed an order for an additional 960 500 textbooks in addition to the 2 262 530 purchased in August and the 1.6 million books purchased in April.
To date almost 60% of the second order has been delivered to the warehouse by publishers.
“The delivery of the additional books to schools is in process and will be completed in the first week of the reopening of the new school calendar year. The department is therefore more than confident great progress has been made to resolve the textbook issues in the province,” the department said.
With regards to the Auditor General’s report, the department has accepted the findings of the and has put in place a team which will continue discussions on the various items that have been identified as needing more attention. – SAnews.gov.za
