Kweneng District Councilors have been informed that brief case companies that do business of supplying are a risk in the supplying of books in schools. The Chairperson of Kweneng District Council, Motlhophi Leo, said this while giving opening remarks to a full council meeting on Monday.
He said such suppliers do not own licenses for stationary shops and depend on orders from outside the country with no control over the inter border supply chain. This creates inadequate and insufficient supply of books. The council, he said, has thus taken a decision to only award stationery tenders to licensed stationery or book shops.
He also found fault in the leadership of the schools to which the books were supplied. “The Education department was allocated P12, 6 million for the 2012/13 financial year to procure textbooks and for school stationery the provision was P2.7m. Text books started to deliver in September and this exercise was completed in January 2013 with all orders distributed to all schools as per their requirement. It should be noted that orders are done by the school heads not council and so any shortages in schools should be attributed to poor stock and needs analysis by the respective school heads. I should hasten to say, however, that budgetary provisions are never adequate in these areas, thus the need to ensure books are cared for to increase their lifespan and contain costs. I call upon management in our schools to play their role in ensuring that waste is reduced and what is distributed to them is efficiently and effectively utilized. There is a lot of wastage and pilferage in schools and this should stop.”
Leo further bemoaned the fact that poverty eradication related Brick Molding Project in the district cannot sustain itself because beneficiaries abandoned it for Ipelegeng. Its beneficiaries reduced from 23 to 10 because Ipelegeng pays P24 per day compared to its P20 per day. The project is sponsored by the Department of Housing, Ministry of Lands and Housing.
“Income generated from this project during the 2012/13 finacial year was P96, 712, 00 and expenditure for the same year stood at P129, 382.00. This clearly shows that the project cannot sustain itself. I appeal to members to encourage the less fortunate and unemployed youth their communities to register with this program. It is not only an income generating project but most importantly a skills transfer project,” he said, adding that the beneficiaries will also learn skills even though the initial stage has little earnings.
