Page 8 - Service Delivery Review

News in Brief

Government is addressing school
infrastructure challenges

Basic Education Minister - Angie Motshekga
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says gov- initiative, this include identifying 3 398 schools that
ernment has taken action to fast-track the provision were lacking in infrastructure in one form or another,
of school infrastructure. Minister Motshekga briefed either not age appropriate or inadequate.
the media on the progress made in the infrastructure
roll out in the basic education sector toward the end “Since that time, we have delivered 2 478 projects
of March 2023, following the Council of Education to schools across the country [and] during this pe-
Minister (CEM) meeting on a number of issues affect- riod, we had the COVID pandemic which forced the
ing the sector. lockdown of the country and significantly impacted
implementation on the ground,” Motshekga said.
According to the Minister, the education sector has
been working on programmes to roll out school infra- The Minister commended private sector companies
structure across the country, but the matter became who responded to the President’s appeal for the cor-
even more urgent after COVID-19 restrictions were porate social investment contribution to the entire
lifted, as they were faced with a major overcrowding effort, highlighting that out of the number of the com-
crisis that needed urgent addressing. She said in a pleted projects, 184 were allocated to donors with
bid to fast-track the provision of infrastructure in the 117 been completed.
schools that are in desperate need and make them
safe havens for children, the department has taken She also noted that the Accelerated Schools Infra-
action on two fronts. structure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) Programme, which
was created to eradicate schools built from inappro-
“The first is we increased the technical capacity of priate material, in their entirety, will be completed in
officials in the infrastructure team by recruiting five the next financial year.
built environment specialists, including a head of in-
frastructure, who are solely focused on implementing “Since the launch of ASIDI, government has delivered
our infrastructure projects. 315 entire schools out of a target of 331, 317 electri-
fication projects, 1 259 water projects and, to come
“Secondly, as you are aware, the President launched back to the specific subject at hand, all 1 053 planned
the Sanitation Appropriate For Education (SAFE) ini- sanitation projects. You can clearly see that we have
tiative to specifically address the infrastructure back- not been sitting on our laurels.
log in our schools. The rapid and successful rollout
of Grade R in our schools meant that just under 4000 “There is a lot we can achieve whether practically or
schools were found to be lacking in either age-appro- in terms of national cohesion when we all pull togeth-
priate infrastructure, in particular, or adequate infra- er. That is not to say government must not be held to
structure in general,” Motshekga said. account but, at the very least, we call for a modicum
of objectivity,” the Minister said.
Government has been hard at work to keep the prom-
ise the President made at the launch of the SAFE – SAnews.gov.za

8 SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 15. No. 3 of 2023