Polokwane - The Limpopo Education Department has enlisted the services of the South African Post Office (SAPO) to deliver textbooks to schools.
In just five weeks, postal workers managed to deliver over six million textbooks to schools across the region before schools reopened on January15. This is a big improvement on last year, when many schools experienced challenges in receiving learning material.
“Using the Post Office was a very effective approach and in a very short space of time, we managed to deliver books to all our schools in the province. At the times schools opened, we were at 99%.
“(We are) now like a born again department, with no hassles or shortages of learning equipment like last year. We consider this approach as the way to go in future,” said provincial education spokesperson Phuti Seloba on Thursday.
He said because SAPO was a government institution, it meant that government, on its own, had delivered services.
Seloba said the department didn't use any middlemen or private companies to help with deliveries. Instead, books were ordered directly from publishers and delivered straight to their warehouse in Limpopo. From there, the books were delivered directly to schools.
“The only private entities which were involved were the publishers of the books. All the rest was done by the department and the Post Office,” said Seloba.
Managing director of logistics at SAPO, Molefe Mathibe, confirmed they delivered six million textbooks to 3 928 schools in the province in a space of five weeks.
He attributed the success of the exercise to SAPO's extensive network, which extends into isolated communities.
He said SAPO planned to diversify its sources of income, instead of relying only on mail.
"The delivery of textbooks forms part of these plans to diversify,” said Mathibe.
SAPO chairperson Dr Hlamani Manzini said in a statement that Limpopo covers almost 124 000 square kilometres and that some schools could only be reached by off-road vehicles.
He said the textbook delivery project created temporary jobs for 240 people in the province.
"They acted as drivers, team leaders, data captures, pickers, checkers and sorters," he said. – SAnews.gov.za
