20 May 2013

As a way of curbing the shortage of stationary,  the Kweneng District Council (KDC) has taken a decision to award stationary tenders to stationary or book shops which could demonstrate reliability of stocks throughout the year licensed, council chair, Mr Motlhophi Leo has said.

Addressing councillors in Molepolole last week, Mr Leo said failure to supply in time and adequately by “brief case” suppliers are risks as they are unreliable and these leads to children’s education being compromised.

“The root cause is that our suppliers do not own licenses for stationary shops, so they depend on orders from outside the country with no control over the inter border supply chain, hence the decision to only award stationary tenders to licensed stationary or book shops,” he said.

He said although the Department of Education was allocated P12.6 and P2.7 million for books procurement and stationary respectively, the budgetary provisions are not always adequate and this calls for prudent utilisation of resources.

 “I therefore call upon management in our schools to play their role in ensuring that wastage is reduced and what is distributed to them is efficiently and effectively utilised.

There is a lot of wastage and pilferage in school and this must stop. I should hasten to also say that budgetary provisions are never enough and there is the need to ensure books are cared for to increase their life span and contain costs,” he said.

Mr Leo said the financial stress faced by the country and the world at large calls for all to embark on cost cutting or containment in order to save for the critical services needed by communities. 

“These are times for us to ensure that priorities are set based on the urgent need of communities we represent than simple political wishes.

I have thus chosen to invite school heads and student leaders here today so that they appreciate the financial difficulties we are facing with the hope that at each school they will employ measures to care for school books, equipment and buildings in their custody,” the council chair said. 

On other issues, Mr Leo said though KDC received inadequate provision for payments of the Orphan Care programme, the  council used over P81 million over three years forcing the municipality to divert funds from other votes to cater for cost overruns.

“The programme has over the years created a major blunt on council’s financial position and this diversion of funds has come with serious consequences on service delivery and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has been notified of this over expenditure in the Orphan Care Programme and follow ups are made constantly,” Mr Leo said. ENDS