More Gupta pockets lined through failed FS Maths Lab contract

17 May 2016

In June 2012, Education MEC, Honourable Tate Makgoe, launched the first ever Mathematics Laboratory in South Africa to much fanfare. The noble objectives of this state of the art technology were:

- The improvement of learners’ academic performance, thereby boosting morale; 

- The building of numeracy skills, analytical thinking and love for learning in children;

- Bring about a decrease in school absenteeism and drop-out rates; and,

- The enablement of Teacher in new teaching learning systems. 

The Department of Education awarded the contract to Eagle Brothers for the establishment and management of Math Labs in the province. Eagle Brothers then outsourced the contract to NIIT Technologies, an Indian based company. The first contract was signed by the Department of Education on 1 August 2011 to establish 200 Math Labs in Primary and Intermediate schools across the Free State.  

Based on the success of Phase 1, the project was extended to another 300 Schools in 2012. At a financial cost of approximately R40 000 per Lab, the estimated amount spent is R32 million. 

I called 20 schools and only 2 confirmed their Math Labs are functional. Some schools reported that their Math Labs were never operational. They cited problems like code words that were missing and lack of training. The majority of these Math Labs are evidently not functional.

The MEC twice led a delegation to India in relation to the roll out of Math Labs, which never really happened. I was not surprised when I started looking into this contract that I found a link to a company named DS Digital, with two listed directors named Mr Himanshu Gupta and Mrs Savita Gupta. 

What is the extent of the corrupt relationship between ANC cadres and those named Gupta, that even the education of our children is gambled away like this? 

Issued by Mariette Pittaway, DA MPL in the Free State Provincial Legislature, 17 May 2016