Nelson Mandela Bay’s department of education will have light for the first time in nearly a year after the department settled its R56m electricity bill on Thursday.
Since September, staff at the department’s offices in Gqeberha and Kariega have had to travel as far as Graaff-Reinet and Makhanda to make use of electronic equipment.
On other occasions, they sat idle, unable to get work done.
Most employees had not worked a full day in months.
The department had been without lights since 2019 before it was switched back on when the municipality unblocked all meters at the start of the nationwide lockdown in March 2020.
The lights were switched off again in September, when the municipality started blocking meters again, and workers have been in the dark since.
But on Friday, education MEC Fundile Gade said the department had paid R56m that was owed to the Bay municipality and R16m to the Buffalo City municipality.
A further R19m owed to Amathole was due to be paid on Wednesday.
When a reporter from The Herald visited the Gqeberha office in Sidwell at 1pm on Thursday, she was not allowed in as the staff were already going home.
At the Kariega office on Friday, the staff sat in dark offices.
They said they crossed their fingers every day that that their laptop batteries would last long enough for them to finish working.
An employee, who asked not to be named because he is not permitted to talk to the media, said they were forced to drive elsewhere to get their laptops charged, print documents and do anything else that required electricity.
“I leave home with my laptop fully charged in the morning and work as much as I can before it dies,” the man said.
“When it dies, I have to go to one of the schools nearby to get it charged.
“I have no choice but to make a plan because we are still expected to meet deadlines though there is no electricity.”
He said the last time they had reliable electricity was late in 2019.
“The lights were switched on when the lockdown started but there was no-one working here.
“When we came back, they were switched off again until now,” he said.
Another employee in the Kariega office said some staff members were forced to travel as far as Makhanda to meet deadlines.
“Some of us have to travel to [Makhanda] or Graaff-Reinet, where they have electricity to sort out things such as pensioners’ documents.
“Others have to go to Bhisho to get printouts of their payslips.”
She said they were aware that the department’s lights had been switched off because schools in the metro had defaulted on paying their bills.
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A Gqeberha teacher assistant said many had felt the pinch as their payments for April had been delayed since their contracts were extended at the end of March.
She said they were asked to deliver documents to the office in Sidwell for verification before they could be paid.
By Thursday last week, she had still not received her money.
Gade said schools across various districts in the province had failed to settle their electricity bill and the debt had accumulated over the years.
He said a stricter auditing system needed to be followed now that the bill had been settled to avoid a repeat of the same cycle.
“We just need to be a bit meticulous, not just about financial management but good governance in schools.
“Schools are being audited almost yearly but we have been making some mistakes.
“We have found that sometimes schools benefit out of getting monies without being audited,” Gade said.
He said R5bn from the provincial budget was allocated to schools.
“Out of the R34bn allocated to the [department], R5bn goes directly to schools, so you can’t be playing about that because there is a huge amount of money going to schools.
“Five-billion rand is too much not to be closely monitored while there are departments in this provincial government that do not have R5bn,” Gade said.
The department follows the five quintile system to allocate budgets to schools in the province.
Bills for schools in quintile one to three, referred to as the “non-fee-paying schools”, are settled directly by the department while budgets are allocated to schools in quintiles four and five.
The budget includes water, electricity and sanitation.
The MEC said the Bay was one of two leading districts which had not paid teacher assistants on time.
This was a consequence of the electricity issue in the Bay.
“The officials of the district had to relocate to [Makhanda] for any operational matters that HR must do, which is a strain in terms of the turnaround time in executing the plans of government,” he said.
The second district, Amathole east, was affected by a delay in appointing the district director.
Gade said the department intended to clear all debt to service providers by June.
Municipal spokesperson Kupdio Baron confirmed the department had settled its R56m bill on Thursday.
“We received proof of payment for that amount on Thursday but will only restore electricity supply once the payment reflects in our account,” he said.
On Friday afternoon, the lights were still off in the Kariega and Gqeberha offices.
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