KDC blames school heads for textbook crisis

NNASARETHA KGAMANYANE
Correspondent | Wednesday May 22, 2013 00:00

Speaking during the ongoing second session of the ordinary full council meeting in Molepolole recently, Leo told the house that the education department in Kweneng was allocated P12.6 million for the 2012/13 financial year to procure textbooks and P2.7 million for stationery.

He said that they delivered textbooks in September last year until January this year.Even though this is the case, Leo told the meeting that orders are done by the school heads, not the council as some people assume, and that any shortages in schools should be attributed to poor stock and needs analysis by respective school heads.

'I should hasten to say, however, that budgetary provisions are never adequate in this area thus there is need to ensure books are cared for to increase their life span and contain costs,' he said. Leo called on Kweneng schools' management to play their role in ensuring that waste is reduced, and to efficiently and effectively utilise books that have just been distributed at their schools.

'There is a lot of wastage and pilfering in schools and this should stop,' he said.As there is a great shortage of stationery in schools, the chairperson told the council that this crisis is partly due to failure of suppliers to supply in time and adequately.

He said that the root cause of this is that their suppliers do not own licences for stationery shops and so depend on orders from outside the country with no control over this cross border supply chain.

He said that to curb the problem, the council resolved to award stationery tenders only to licensed stationers or bookshops with the capacity to supply stocks throughout the year. He stated that 'briefcase suppliers' are a risk because they are unreliable, which leads to children's education being compromised.