SPEECH BY BRETT HERRON, GOOD MEMBER OF THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT AND SECRETARY-GENERAL
20 May 2021
Clearly the MEC for Education has a legal and moral duty to ensure that every learner can attend school.
Ensuring that there is adequate capacity for learners is the MECs core function.
If the MEC is unable or unwilling to ensure that every child in the province is placed then she should step down
This year we saw the shocking lack of preparation for the new school year.
Thousands of learners remained unplaced for months while the MEC complained about in-migration and funding cuts.
Urbanisation is not just a word to put in planning documents. Urbanisation is the movement of people from rural areas and small towns to larger towns and cities. It has a real and practical outcome – the MEC’s role is to meet the demand – not complain about it.
The problem is the government has different priorities.
It can allocate R1.3 billion to a so-called Safety Plan, creating an illusion of policing, and spending on a mandate that it does not have, while at the same time complaining it cannot provide schooling to children because it has no money.
The irrationality of this is astounding.
Even worse, according the Acting MEC for Transport and Public Works the Department of Education has relinquished 13 school buildings since 2009 and 15 buildings previously used as schools are currently not being used for any purpose.
On top of that, the MEC surrendered R360 million from her budget – largely from her educator salaries budget just two months ago.
So we had unplaced learners, we have empty school buildings and we had R360 million in unspent salaries.
And the MEC could not make a plan?
Why not?
Clearly we have a problem in the Western Cape. A safety plan that funds learner law enforcement officers, armed with pepper spray, to address the murder rate while children cannot get into schools? What do you think is likely to happen to a child who is rejected by the education system and their government?
This is not rocket science. Even a lawyer should be able to figure this out.