06 Mar 2016

Palapye Secondary School will benefit from the Economic Stimulus Programme (ESP).

Addressing Palapye Sub-region staff on Wednesday, Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development Mr Fidelis Molao said his ministry will receive a total of 5 300 housing units from 2016 to 2019 when ESP ends.
He said 300 housing units will be constructed this financial year.

He said the housing units will help address the problem of acute shortage of accommodation for teachers, while 177 laboratories and 73 classrooms will be constructed to address the problem of shortage of classrooms.
Mr Molao further said his ministry has not been allocated posts by Department of Public Service Management therefore cannot recruit temporary teachers on a permanent basis.

He said his ministry is faced with financial constraints despite getting the lion’s share in the national budget.

He said of the over P10 billion allocated to his ministry under the recurrent budget this financial year about P5 billion is for salaries while the remaining amount is insufficient to address problems that his ministry is facing since those challenges have financial implications.

For his part, acting deputy permanent secretary Mr Labane Mokgosi said MoESD has been allocated P189 million through ESP to help push the backlog.

He said some brigades will be maintained citing Shashe and Senyawe brigades, adding that tenders for maintenance of these brigades had been awarded.

Mr Mokgosi said his ministry has a remainder of about P140 million for the next financial year to maintain classrooms and teachers’ houses.
He also added that the ministry is aware of shortage of management positions in brigades, adding that last year the ministry managed to get Heads of Department posts and currently striving for senior lecturer I posts.

He said this is not easy to implement because it has financial implications and will gradually be attended to.
Regarding the merging of Palapye brigade and Palapye Technical College, he said the merger should be implemented as per the government’s instruction.

He said the ministry is yet to find out why there is a delay in merging the two institutions.
Regional operations director, Mr Mokwaledi Koko added that government is aware of the dilapidated infrastructure at Palapye Secondary School (PSS) and will maintain it through ESP and a tender has been awarded.

He also added that his ministry is aware of the need for cartridges for photocopiers in primary schools. He said the photocopiers were bought by his ministry but the equipment is serviced by the council.
Mr Koko said the council did not budget to buy cartridges for those photocopiers as a result most photocopiers are not functioning because of lack of ink. He said the ministry intervened by buying ink for some schools. Ends