Paying ghost employees has contributed to the KwaZulu-Natal Education department’s financial crisis.

This was revealed by the Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube, who held an urgent meeting with the provincial government in Durban on Monday.  The Minister held an urgent meeting with Premier Thamsanqa Ntuli, Education MEC Sipho Hlomuka as well as Finance MEC Francois Rogers in an attempt to avert a further crisis in the department.

Speaking to the media afterwards, Gwarube said the reason for the crisis was a historical underinvestment in education but the financial crisis was also compounded by paying ghost employees and for non-existent pupils. She said despite previous manual head count exercises to root out the problem, it persisted because people managed to find new ways of cheating the system.

“Despite the under investment in education historically, we can sit and say there were no man-made problems. The department has not been prudent and there must be accountability for that. For instance the department has been paying ghost employees, failing to remove retired or dead employees from the system as well as for inflated pupil numbers in schools. We need to do an audit to clean out the system,” said Gwarube.

Although the meeting acknowledged that R3.4 billion was urgently needed, there was no commitment of when and where the money would come from. Gwarube and Ntuli promised to negotiate with the National Treasury to bail out the department.

It also emerged that the R3.4 billion will be a short term measure with Rodgers putting the overall figure at R7 billion in order to normalise the provincial government finances.

He said that another reason for the financial mess was the national government’s mistake to approve an unfunded wage bill which cost the provincial fiscus R80 billion. He defended his decision to place the department under partial administration, insisting he would not allow the department to spend money it does not have.

The department issued a statement on Monday, saying that the only constitutional mechanism available is a Section 100 intervention ‘ which all parties agreed would not be desirable’.

“Instead, the KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Treasury will continue to support the Department of Education through existing Section 18 interventions provided under the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), with technical support, monitoring, and advocacy from national government for the reprioritisation of resources across the national fiscus.

“To safeguard the stability of the education system, the meeting agreed to prioritise four urgent areas of intervention, which are safeguarding transfers to schools, particularly Quintile 1 to 3 schools serving the poorest learners; protecting the delivery of learning and teaching support materials (LTSM) to all schools; ensuring the smooth rollout of examinations, essential for stability and fairness in the system and securing scholar transport, which is vital for learner access, particularly in rural and under-served areas.”

The department said all those who attended the meeting  agreed to work through the Premier-chaired Rescue Team to drive recovery efforts in collaboration with the national department of basic education and the provincial Treasury.

Gwarube’s urgent visit was prompted by the  concerns that the department was sliding into a deep financial crisis ahead of the final matric examinations.

Sources within the department have already raised the alarm, saying the financial issues have delayed the process for the delivery of textbooks in preparation for the next year’s school calendar. However, due to being placed under partial administration, the department has not yet commenced with the process.

The department’s financial crisis stemmed from the revelation that by March this year it had already overspent its budget and was now struggling to meet its financial obligations.

The department is also under scrutiny by the provincial Treasury over allegations of fraud and nepotism in the awarding of the school nutrition tender.

willem.phungula@inl.co.za

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