Thousands of Eastern Cape schools still waiting for textbooks

01 Feb 2016 | Admin Author

Thousands of pupils in the Eastern Cape are still waiting for textbooks - months into the school year.

The Sunday Times reports that books for 1.5 million pupils at 5582 schools in the province are still in a warehouse in East London.

It says the basic education department claimed last week that 99 percent of government schools had received textbooks.

However, Eastern Cape education superintendent-general Modidima Mannya says there are still "serious shortages" with the wrong books delivered to schools in certain cases.

Claims of books not reaching their destination, emerged after Mannya commissioned a forensic investigation into several hundred schools that failed to pay a total of R75 million to suppliers, even though they had received funding from the department.