Thousands of matric pupils given 55,000 government tablets in a controversial deal in 2020 are refusing to return them.
The Eastern Cape education department is facing an uphill battle trying to recover them and is in disarray over how to get them back for the 2021 matrics, DispatchLIVE was told.
The tablet project, said to have cost the taxpayer more than R500m, was part of the department’s e-learning programme.
In a bizarre situation, the former pupils are refusing to hand the machines back to the government, saying they signed a contract with service providers and not the principals.
The provincial education department says that the matter is before the court and has clammed up.
Education portfolio committee chair and ANC MPL Mpumelelo Saziwa said the department had blundered by not involving principals in the distribution of the tablets.
He said some principals had tried to retrieve the machines from pupils, but had been met with heavy resistance.
Saziwa said: “It’s difficult for the department to collect all the tablets it issued last year. As a committee we picked up that when the gadgets were issued, principals of deserving schools were overlooked.
“They were not involved at all — and a deal was made with the pupils. The service provider would come to a school and take the pupils’ ID numbers and give them the tablets.
“When some principals tried to retrieve the tablets, pupils became argumentative and reminded them that the principal was not part of the transaction, and that they dealt with service providers, and not the principals. This is a problem that hit some schools.”
He said when schools reopened this year he had been part of a delegation that visited the Alfred Nzo East district on January 15. They had found that only about 800 of the 4,157 tablets distributed had been retrieved.
“On a visit the following week the number had slightly increased after pupils were instructed to submit police-signed affidavits by those who claim to have lost the tablets through theft or robbery,” he said.
He referred the DispatchLIVE to the department for the number of recovered tablets and the status of the programme for the current year.
The tablets and SIM cards were procured from Sizwe Africa IT Group and MTN.
Provincial education spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima declined to comment. He said: “Sorry, this is an ongoing matter before a court of law, therefore we cannot comment.”
A senior department official, who asked to remain anonymous, said the department was in a deep hole and it was unlikely the tablets would ever come back.
The official said parents could not be dragged into the mix because they were not part of the transaction.
“The department is in a mess. We cannot retrieve the missing tablets from the pupils.
“We cannot even go to the parents to pay for them because these tablets were given to the matric kids and they signed for them,” said the senior official.
“The sad part is that the department is paying for tablets which are not in use.
“The current matric kids cannot not have access to them because of the blunders we have made as the department.
“Now, the department will be forced to buy new tablets for this year's matrics or totally abolish this programme,” he said.
In October 2020, Bhisho high court judge Buyiswa Majiki found irregularities in the department’s controversial R538m three-year lease agreement for the tablets.
This was after the State Information Technology Agencies (Sita) launched an urgent court application to halt the contract between the department and service providers.
Sita had argued that in terms of the Sita Act, it had the sole prerogative to procure the IT requirements for government departments.
Majiki found that less than a month into the lease, R123m was already processed for payment on a monthly scheme which, by then, should only have cost R11.2m.
The court then ordered the education department to halt any further payments on the contract to Sizwe Africa Group and MTN pending a full review of the procurement process.
But the department had already delivered 99.9% of the 55,000 tablets when the ruling was made.
The contracts were entered into through a piggybacking tender process.
DA MPL Yusuf Cassim said had proper tender processes been followed, the cost of the tablets would have been less than R538m.
He said: “The ANC MPLs who sat in the portfolio committee meeting last year, justifying the contract and pushing it through despite mounting evidence that it was irregular at best and blatant corruption at worst, should hang their heads in shame.
“The department has also blatantly defied the education portfolio committee, which repeatedly requested updates, and instructed the department to give a complete account of the tablet debacle. No such report or updates have been forthcoming.”
In July 2020, DispatchLIVE reported the contract, which was announced at a cost of R160m, had ballooned to more than R400m.
The late education superintendent-general Themba Kojana said there were 77,900 Grade 12 pupils enrolled for 2020, and 55,000 would receive tablets and sim cards with data.
These, he said at the time, were pupils from the poorer quintiles one, two and three, while 17,000 pupils from quintiles four and five would only receive the data sim cards.
DispatchLIVE
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