10 Dec 2013

The Kweneng District Council loses P2.6millon annually because it supplies an extra 30 000 text books to primary schools in the district, the Council Secretary, Mr Wadza Tema, said.

Responding to comments during a full meeting of the Kweneng District Council last week, Mr Tema said council employees could not balance the number of text books with enrolment in schools. In some cases, the council supplied books that had not been ordered.

Mr Tema said the situation led to the appointment of a task force o audit primary schools about the constant shortage of books in some schools due to poor supplies management despite the annual P12million books allocations by the council to schools in the district.

The taskforce was to access storage rooms and make stock count of available books, compare school’s orders with available text books and recommend whether the orders were justified or needed modification, make individual school reports on management of text books such as storage recovery, produce and submit a final report on textbooks situation in Kweneng District.

Some of the things discovered by the task force during its visit to the 91 schools in the district included the fact that books were never supplied to pupils, supplies were made to schools without request and that not all ordered books were delivered to schools. He said as a result of the findings, he recommended that the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development should consider abolishing the council’s education department because he considered it irrelevant.

He said the recommendation was based on the fact that the unit was doing nothing other than supplies and felt it was appropriate to entrust the council supplies with all the supplies to avoid duplication of responsibilities which evidently led to constant loss of council revenue. He also challenged councillors to consider whether or not its education committee would still be relevant and make recommendations accordingly.

On other issues the council secretary called on Kweneng District councillors to devise ways of reducing the number of destitute persons, which stood at 13 600. He called for advocacy towards encouraging such individuals to consider alternative package of the poverty eradication programme as it was sustainable compared the popular Ipelegeng proramme.

Regarding concerns raised by Cllr Botokanyana Motoroko of Lentsweletau East and Cllr Kelatlhegile Ditsebe of Matsheng South to the effect that because of negative attitude towards work, some employees of the Department of Social and Community Development were failing eligible destitute Mr Tema said he did not dispute the display of negative attitudes by certain officers, the problem was also with the destitute policy. He warned that problems would persist until such time that the police was revised. ENDS