NEHAWU North West Flabergasted By Lost Budgets To Other Provinces Through The Department Of Education

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Friday March 20, 2020

The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] in the North West Province is deeply angered by the reckless and continuous sabotage by officials of the Department of Education in the North West Province.

As NEHAWU in the province, we have become aware of the Government Gazette 236 of 02nd March 2020 by the Finance Minister.

The Gazette deals with two principles:

• Stopping of allocation of funds in respect of conditional allocation to Provinces [As a result of underspending].
• Re-Allocation of stopped conditional allocations to certain Provinces.

According to this Gazette, our province is once more guilty of underspending particularly on infrastructure and it is therefore our view that perpetrators of this act cannot go unpunished. The Department of Education in the previous financial year decided to underspent its budget and not only that, further decided to redirect our infrastructure development budget to the magnitude of 126 million rand.

This money could have been used to improve dilapidated buildings where our kids and our members and workers in general in this department are supposed to enjoy a safe and conducive working environment but instead the money is re-allocated to the other Province without any consultation let alone to appreciate the state of buildings in the Province.

The same action has been repeated again by the same department in the current financial year by underspending and redirecting 226 million to the other province again. We regard this as an act of sabotage and that other provinces are given a preferential treatment by the same officials who are employed in this rural and disadvantage province and this doesn’t auger well with us.

The North West province remains a rural province with areas that do not have schools at all; some areas’ schools are overcrowded while others’ facilities remains underdeveloped and in the main, this is where a black child is located. Therefore, the act of underspending gives problematic symptoms of lack of consciousness by those responsible for the management of our finances coupled with a shocking ignorance of the material conditions that exists in this province.

Education remains a key priority of our union just like it remains a key priority for our government and therefore, we will convene a meeting with the Head Of Department or Superintendent of the Education Department to explain this abnormal behaviour.

The MEC and the SG must take decisive actions against this underspending and removal of financial resources from our province to the other provinces. A child in the North West province should equally benefit quality education under safe and conducive environment just like all other children who are prioritised by their respective provincial governments.