Tomorrow, Friday 24 August, Equal Education (EE) and the Eastern Cape Department of Education (ECDoE,) represented by HOD Themba Kojana and MEC Mandla Makupula, will be meeting with various school infrastructure implementing agents (IAs).
These IAs are responsible for the project management of school infrastructure. It was agreed, after a meeting between ECDoE, EE and IAs held on 11 May 2018, that discussions between us would take place on a quarterly basis. In these meetings, we discuss current infrastructructure project plans, progress on the implementation of these plans, and any challenges to efficient service delivery.
Tomorrow’s meeting comes at a fortuitous time – we recently received the ECDoE’s school infrastructure implementation report, which is crucial for monitoring and evaluating the progress toward complying with the deadlines and deliverables stipulated in the Norms and Standards law. EE requested the report via a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) application.
EE is particularly interested to discuss progress in the eradication of plain pit latrines and schools built of inappropriate material (mud, wood, etc) in the Eastern Cape, as these are explicitly prohibited by the Norms and Standards.
We also want the IAs present to provide us with their project lists for the current financial year (2018/19), as was promised at our previous meeting on 11 May 2018.
NOTE: EE will not be providing further media comment immediately subsequent to the meeting, but will issue a media statement regarding its outcomes on Monday 27 August.