Cape Town - The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has set aside R46 million to tackle gang and drug activities at schools. The money is from its R1.47 billion budget for the 2023/2024 financial year.
The budget, which was presented to the legislature’s education standing committee, also features massive infrastructure investments and new teacher training initiatives.
Deputy director-general Alan Meyer said there were 18 areas in which there were a number of programmes related to drug abuse.
“For example, we do random drug testing where learners are tested for drugs, not only on their person but also to see whether they have consumed them,” he said.
Meyer was responding to a question from committee member Aishah Cassiem (EFF), who had asked for the department’s plans for all the schools and communities where there was gang and drug activity.
Cassiem asked: “Are the plans to spend on equipment that can be used to take weapons like guns and knives
at the entrances of the schools?”She wanted to know how much had been allocated to safety and intervention programmes in such areas.
Meyer said the WCED ran holiday school programmes in a number of high-risk areas where pupils were kept occupied during the holidays by Safe Schools initiative officials working with other departments such as the Department of Social Development.
At these engagements, opportunities are provided to pupils for drug counselling, as well as the issues of gang activity within particular areas.
Department head Brent Walters told the committee that the issue of whether schools would have metal detectors was a policy decision that still needed to be discussed.
He said the department could not handle the matter on its own and that at the beginning of the school year he had made the unprecedented move of writing a letter to every parent in the province asking for their assistance in the matter.
Meanwhile, Education MEC David Maynier told the committee that in the coming year the Department would continue with its rapid build programme, spending R350 million.
Maynier said the rapid build programme had already realised the construction of more than 740 classrooms.
Committee chairperson Deidré Baartman (DA) said: “MEC Mireille Wenger called the 2023/2024 budget a ‘Budget for Action’, and nowhere is that ethos more clearly demonstrated than in the field of education.”
She said the funding allocations in the budget represented “a mammoth investment in the future of our province”.
However, rejecting the budget, provincial ANC education spokesperson Khalid Sayed said the party would closely monitor how the funds were spent and was concerned that the issue of unplaced pupils had yet to be adequately addressed.
He said the party was concerned about the technical glitches in the online registration system.
“While we do welcome the rollout of the pop-up stations to assist parents with registration, we would like it extended to outside the metro, and we are concerned that it’s not a permanent feature.”