Education Minister Motshekga Says Government Is Improving School Facilities

Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga affirmed that the government has been working to improve school facilities across South Africa.

The 67-year-old minister said more than 2,400 schools have been renovated out of 3,398 schools in Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, explaining the plan for further strengthening the academic infrastructure by dividing the course of action into two parts.

"The first is we increased the technical capacity of officials in the infrastructure team by recruiting five built environment specialists, including a head of infrastructure, who are solely focused on implementing our infrastructure projects," Motshekga said, as per SA News.

In the second part of the action, Motshekga shared the details of President Cyril Ramaphosa's launched Sanitation Appropriate For Education (SAFE) initiative that helps to address the infrastructure backlog in the schools.

"The rapid and successful rollout of Grade R in our schools meant that just under 4000 schools were found to be lacking in either age-appropriate infrastructure, in particular, or adequate infrastructure in general," she continued.

Motshekga noted since the launch of SAFE initiative, more than 2,478 schools have been fixed across the country. She underlined the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the progress of on-ground work.

The minister also pointed out that ASIDI (Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative), which was launched in 2011 to facilitate the eradication of all schools created by inappropriate material, is reaching its goal successfully.

"Since the launch of ASIDI, the government has delivered 315 entire schools out of a target of 331, 317 electrification projects, 1 259 water projects and, to come back to the specific subject at hand, all 1 053 planned sanitation projects," she explained. "You can clearly see that we have not been sitting on our laurels."

The minister continued, "There is a lot we can achieve whether practically or in terms of national cohesion when we all pull together. That is not to say the government must not be held to account but, at the very least, we call for a modicum of objectivity."

These remarks came in view of the death of a preschooler named Langalam Viki earlier this month after she fell into a toilet pit at Glen Grey Primary School in Eastern Cape.

"The death of a child is something really serious and it is unseemly to use that death to cast aspersions at government or paint a picture of an uncaring, under-performing government," the minister said, SowetanLive reported. "We want to say to the nation, our work may not be good enough, but a lot has been done and continues to be done on a daily basis."