The newly proposed amendments to the current school infrastructure law by Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga will result in a serious disregard of the right to basic education as schools will collapse for many more years to come.
These are sentiments of concern shared by human rights and education organisations Equal Education (EE) and Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) in a joint statement issued on Tuesday.
This comes after the Motshekga proposed changes to school Infrastructure laws that would give the Basic Education Department further prolonged deadlines to complete school infrastructure projects.
As one would expect, this does not sit well with human rights organisations who are strongly opposed to Motshekga's proposal. They say that this will enable the Department to legally avoid accountability when it comes to fulfilling its duties.
Without deadlines that are written into law, learners and teachers could be waiting another 10 or 20 years for their schools to be fixed! Without the legally binding deadlines, how can learners, teachers and parents hold the education departments accountable to fulfil their legal and moral duty?
The organisations further stated that the processed deadline for the amendment in question to be submitted by 10 July 2022 is far too short. They add this is not enough time for stakeholders to participate in the process that affects them to such a large extent.
They have urged the Department to extend the deadline for feedback from the public to, at least, 30 July. EE also points out that Minister Motshekga was ordered by the court to address the deficiencies in the school infrastructure legislation, not to weaken it.
“After EE got Minister Motshekga to adopt the school infrastructure law in 2013, we went to court in 2018 to get her to fix some of the gaps in it. EELC represented us in that court case, which we won (read the judgement here).” EE explains.
The reports that provinces are required to provide to Minister Motshekga outlining their status and intentions for repairing schools and constructing new schools are one of the gaps that EE sought the court to force Minister Motshekga to fill. They requested that the court instruct Minister Motshekga to make the reports public as soon as she receives them.
