The Inkatha Freedom Party is shocked at the manner in which the KwaZulu-Natal provincial Department of Education has so poorly distributed sanitary pads to schools in the province, with many schools reporting an oversupply and having to store the excess in libraries and storerooms.
IFP MP on Basic Education, Mr Xolani Ngwezi said, “We have thousands of teenage girls across South Africa who do not attend school on a regular basis because of no access to sanitary pads. Yet in the province of KwaZulu-Natal we see the provincial Department of Education, flooding certain schools with excess supply,”
“Note must be taken that this is the same department that cries poverty and who has no funds to fill critical teaching posts, provide textbooks or effect repairs to dilapidated school infrastructure in the province,”
“The entire tender and supply chain process for the sanitary pad roll-out programme by the provincial Department of Education in KwaZulu-Natal must be scrutinised and investigated. The IFP fully supports, and in fact was the first party to raise the dire need for free sanitary pads to our teenage girls in South Africa, however this process seems to have been hijacked by unscrupulous public officials and ‘tenderpreneurs’ in KZN,”
“The IFP maintains its view and calls for the immediate placing under administration of the provincial Department of Education by the National Department of Basic Education,” concluded Ngwezi, MP.
Contact:
Mr Xolani Ngwezi, MP
076 975 5555
