Cape Town - Basic Education Director General Mathanzima Mweli says the department is addressing concerns raised by the Auditor General on the department’s Kha Ri Gude programme.
In the department’s annual report, the Auditor General found that volunteers were paid stipends without learners in class.
Due to such claims, an amount of R44.3 million was incurred as fruitless and wasteful expenditure at the time of the audit, pending a departmental investigation.
“We are saying that up to now, we have looked at these cases as we have promised you … 95 of these related cases have been concluded and we have already started recovering money,” Mweli said on Tuesday in his address to the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education.
Kha Ri Gude is a Tshivenda phrase which means 'let us learn'. It teaches adults who missed out on their schooling, who cannot read or write.
The campaign was launched in February 2008 to enable 4.7 million adults above the age of 15 years to become literate and numerate in one of the 11 official languages.
Some 6 172 cases of volunteers, who were paid stipends, were identified by the office of the Auditor General.
Mweli said after investigations, it has been established that 90 cases relate to volunteers with no learners, who were fully paid stipends amounting to R282 297 for the first two months of the campaign.
He said the department has since recovered R281 838 of the amount, with only R458 still to be recovered.
The Director General said 1 344 cases were linked to learners, who were deceased during the campaign, amounting to about R12 million.
He also said some 4 738 cases amounting to R39 million are still to be analysed.
Mweli said measures are being taken to curb these challenges in the future.
“We are working with Home Affairs. We are taking our data and linking it to the data of Home Affairs so that we avoid what the chairperson of SCOPA [Standing Committee on Public Accounts] referred to as ‘ghost learners’, or deceased learners.
“We are also using copies of IDs. We have also conducted workshops to heighten our monitoring at all levels of the system and we have also agreed with SCOPA that as part of rounding off this programme, the special unit of SCOPA, which is the asset and forfeiture unit, will be working with us to look at cases that might be fraudulent so that we leave no stone unturned,” he said.
About Kha Ri Gude
Initiated and managed by the Department of Basic Education, Kha Ri Gude delivers across all nine provinces.
The campaign enables adult learners to read, write and calculate in their mother tongue in line with the Unit Standards for Adult Basic Education and Training (Abet) Level One and also to learn spoken English.
The specifically designed campaign material teaches reading, writing and numeracy and integrates themes and life skills such as health, gender, the environment and civic education.
The material has been adapted for use in Braille in 11 languages, and for use by the hearing impaired.
The campaign makes specific efforts to target vulnerable groups. In 2011, 80% of the learners were women, 8% people with disabilities, 25% were youth, and 20% were above the age of 60.
Kha Ri Gude provides visually impaired learners with a range of assistive devices, including Braillette Boards and Perkins Braillers for use in class. Learner packs include a full set of material in Braille and a talking calculator.
The large-scale printing of Braille material is made possible by Kha Ri Gude owning one of the two high-bulk printers available in South Africa.
Between the inception of the programme and March 2011, approximately 1.5 million learners became literate. From 2010 to March 2011, 609 199 learners successfully completed the programme.
Allocations to the Kha Ri Gude illiteracy programme increased from R468 million in 2010/11 to more than R520 million in 2012/13.
Mweli said the Kha Ri Gude Campaign has already won an international award for meeting the target of the Millennium Development Goals of halving illiteracy by 2015.
To date, the campaign has reached more than 4.2 million learners and created 326 307 job opportunities. – SAnews.gov.za
