Rural learners in some parts of the country will continue to not attend school because of inadequate transport‚ or make daily treks of up to 12km to the nearest bus stop.

Moreover‚ provincial departments of education and transport struggle to finalise a learner transport policy to manage the implementation of an integrated and uniform learner transport service.

Angry MPs in Parliament’s basic education oversight committee on Tuesday shared some of the obstacles faced by young rural learners around the country‚ while blasting the departments for the delays to the draft learner transport policy.

Basic education department officials were also accused of presenting an “atrocious” document to the committee‚ with Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Annette Lovemore saying it should be thrown in the rubbish bin because‚ among other reasons‚ it contained so many spelling errors.

Department of transport officials failed to attend the meeting.

The policy’s main objective is to improve access to quality education by providing safe‚ decent‚ effective and integrated sustainable learner transport.

African National Congress MP Derick Mnguni said he recently reported on two schools facing transport problems in Mpumalanga‚ in the Gert Sibande district on the highveld.

“In February‚ they had this scholar transport for four or five years consecutively operating. All of a sudden‚ in February‚ those scholar transport were stopped. On investigation by the department they found that it was erroneously done. We wrote so many letters to department‚ nothing has happened until a week or two ago they went on a strike in those communities‚” said Mnguni.

Referring to the draft policy‚ DA MP Desiree van der Walt said laws of the road have to be adhered to.

Van der Walt said she has done “plenty of solidarity walks” with learners from various villages to their schools.

“You are not caring for the learners and I get very angry about this‚” said Van der Walt.

Lovemore said learners in Nieu-Bethesda — where there is only one primary school and no high school — end up not attending high school because their parents can’t afford to send them to boarding school in nearby Graaff Reinet.

DA MP Sonja Boshoff said in Schoemanskloof‚ Mpumalanga‚ primary school learners are forced to walk more than five kilometres because they’re not allowed to board the high school bus.

Departmental official Solly Mafoko told the committee there was no policy before and the policy has “been long in the making”.

Acting director-general Paddy Padayachee said presently the department does have funding for learner transport through provincial departments