Bicycles and bakkies may be answer for rural school transport

By SABELO NDLANGISA

THE Eastern Cape Education Department says it needs R60million to provide
transport to rural pupils in the province.

The department’s finance boss, Tracy Cumming, said the current R30m pupil transport budget was insufficient to attract service providers.

The subsidy translates to R50 per pupil per month.

Cumming was responding to concerns from members of the provincial Legislature that some schools in the province were unreachable by car and that rural pupils still had to walk long distances to schools.

She said buses could not reach some schools, making bakkies the only viable mode of transport.

National transport laws have banned the use of bakkies as passenger vehicles.

It emerged that pupils at Holy Cross near Flagstaff had to write one of their exam papers late last year because officials needed a four-wheel drive vehicle to deliver question papers.

During an education oversight committee meeting last week a department official said former MEC Mkhangeli Matomela had negotiated with car maker Tata to design a bakkie to ferry pupils.

Apparently, the provincial Education Department
proposed this to the national
Education and Transport
Departments, but neither had yet responded.

However, MPL Phaki Hobongwana advised the new MEC, Johnny Makgato, not to continue talks with Tata, saying earlier negotiations with DaimlerChrysler, begun after the infamous 2004 Amalinda bakkie accident in which six schoolchildren were killed, were at an advanced stage.

The department had sought permission from Transport Minister Jeff Radebe to pilot five converted bakkies, but it is not clear what happened to the application.

Hobongwana said while bakkies were suitable for urban pupils, the sheer number of rural school children meant that only buses were a viable solution to their transport problem.

Education committee chairperson Mahlubandile Qwase said the ongoing problem was a bad reflection and the department should tackle it this year.

Qwase said the provision of buses posed a solution to the problem.

Other MPLs suggested a massive roll out of bicycles.

Provincial transport spokesperson Ncedo Kumbaca said plans were also afoot to use horse-drawn carts as one of the solutions to the problem.

Kumbaca said buses would be made available to 166 routes in the former Transkei sometime this year.

Only Radebe could authorise the use of bakkies to ferry passengers, he said.

Radebe’s spokesperson, Sam Monareng, said the department had launched a project to provide one million bicycles over 10 years to the country’s rural schoolchildren.