Lying politicians are the pits
· Citizen
At face value, it is quite extraordinary that the chair of a parliamentary committee can go on the public record and accuse a government minister of lying to parliament.
Yet that is exactly what Makhi Feni, chair of the select committee on education, sciences and the creative industries, did when he squared up to Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube.
Visit bettingx.club for more information.
He accused her of lying about the progress made in eliminating the scourge of pit toilets at schools, especially in rural areas.
Feni said: “It is unfortunate the department of basic education and minister knowingly cited as an achievement the completion of an old project that should have been completed in 2018 when, in fact, the backlog had instead become so real.”
He added: “Eradication of pit latrines needs continuous work given its challenging aspect of water, where public schools can go for days without water and rely on JoJo tanks. It seems the communication was used to communicate misleading targets.”
To assess the merit of the accusation, one must take into account Feni’s political allegiance: He is an ANC cadre and there is, clearly, no love lost between many in that organisation and the political bedfellows they were forced to accommodate in the government of national unity in 2024.
Making a minister look like a liar is a clever political move.
However, against that is Gwarube’s out and out denial, with her riposte that the chair is misinterpreting what her department is saying.
She pointed out the department did not say no school faced sanitation challenges and agreed new toilets replacing old pit ones don’t work very well if there is not a ready supply of water.
The spat must not, however, derail the programme to rid the country’s schools of pit toilets, something which was inherited by Gwarube.
Our politicians need to stop squabbling and start fixing.