2010/04/28
THE EASTERN Cape Education Department looks set to fight over whether or not it is obliged to build new premises for a dilapidated “special needs” school in Grahamstown.
The about-face comes after the department seemingly agreed to a court order in terms of which it was assumed it would build new premises for the Amasango Career School.
The school is currently housed in rundown old railway buildings on a small concrete plot next to the railway lines in Grahamstown.
But the Education Department said it had not agreed to certain parts of the court order and suggested in new court papers there was a “misunderstanding” between the department and its own attorneys. It claims it never agreed to the part of the court order which obliged it , 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 include “confirmation that the new school has been budgeted for”.
Instead, the department said it agreed only, by October, to provide the school with six prefabricated classrooms, an ablution block with four toilets and three movable containers converted into a library and storage facilities at its existing premises.
The disputed paragraph referring to building new premises should have been an order obliging the department only to file an answering affidavit to Amasango’s main High Court application.
In the school’s main application it had asked the High Court to review and set aside the department’s decision to remove it from the priority list of planned school construction buildings and 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.
The department last week successfully applied to the court to amend the court order to reflect only that it must, within 10 days, file its answering affidavit to this application.
It seems to be a clear indication that it intends fighting the school in court over the issue of “new” premises.
The dilapidated little 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 in 2007 the school discovered it had been removed from the list. After months of attempting to get an explanation as to why , it resorted to the courts. - By ADRIENNE CARLISLE
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