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THE EASTERN Cape Education Department is trying to back out of a High Court order in which it agreed to build brand new premises for the dilapidated Amasango Career School in Grahamstown.

The Education Department is objecting to a section of the court order in terms of which it was supposed, by March 25, to file an affidavit setting out how it intended “to implement a plan to commence construction of a new school for the Amasango School, such construction to commence by May 2011”.

The affidavit was to also include “confirmation that the new school has been budgeted for”.

But the Education Department now says it never agreed to make this “alternative option” an order of court.

Although the department was legally represented at the court hearing at which Acting Judge Belinda Hartle made the order, its legal representatives have now indicated to the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), acting for Amasango, that it intended to seek to have the order rescinded.

If successful in its rescission application, the department will have delivered a major blow to the school, which has been fighting for its new premises for nearly three years.

The dilapidated school caters for “socially marginalised, impoverished and abused children” and was placed on a priority list of school construction projects in about 2006.

Building of its new school was to begin in 2007, but that same year the school discovered it had been removed from the list.

After months of attempting to get an explanation from the Education Department, it resorted to the courts seeking to review and set aside the decision to remove it from the priority list of planned school construction projects.

It also asked the court to declare the department’s failure to provide appropriate facilities for the school unconstitutional and unlawful and to direct it to provide proper facilities.

But all this became unnecessary after the department apparently agreed to meet all the school’s requirements.

The agreement, which was made an order of court, also stipulated that pending the building of the new premises the department would, by October this year, provide the little school, currently housed in old disused railway buildings on a tiny plot next to the Grahamstown railway station, with six prefabricated classrooms, an ablution block with four toilets and three movable containers converted into a library and storage facilities.

LRC regional director Sarah Septhon said the school would vehemently oppose any attempt to have the order rescinded.

In fact, she has warned the department that it would, within the next week, file an application to have Education MEC Mahlubandile Qwase declared in contempt of court if the required affidavit was not forthcoming. - By ADRIENNE CARLISLE