President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation on Thursday night where he discussed two burning issues facing the country right now, the re-opening of schools and corruption of Covid-19 funds.
Ramaphosa announced that all public schools will take a break for four weeks from Monday the 27th of July until the 25th of August 2020.
He said this would exclude grade 12 and 7 who would only be getting a one and two-week break respectively.
Ramaphosa added that the academic year will extend beyond 2020.
The Minister of Education Angie Motshekga will give further details on how the academic year will proceed.
Corruption
Ramaphosa expressed his concern over reports of corruption, mismanagement of funds, UIF fraud and even fake NGO's being registered to steal money meant for Covid-19 relief.
He said, as a result, he has instructed the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) to investigate all allegations of fraud.
Ramaphosa said the SIU would be assisted by SAPS, the National Prosecuting Authority(NPA), Social Security Agency (SSA), Hawks, Criminal Intelligence (CI), SARS and the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC).
The President said he would receive a report every six weeks and promised that all stolen monies will be recovered.
There are currently 36 cases under investigation and some are in advanced stages of being prosecuted.
Ramaphosa said the Competition Commission has investigated over 800 companies for excessive pricing on essential goods and have issued fines valued at over R16 million.
