Gauteng Education MEC denounces vandalism, theft and malicious damage to education infrastructure [SOUND]

# Gauteng Education MEC Lebogang Maile says government cannot accelerate the elimination of the infrastructure backlog while simultaneously spending scarce public resources rebuilding classrooms, toilets, laboratories, fences and other assets that have been deliberately vandalised or stolen. The province’s infrastructure pressures have been compounded by population growth, migration, housing development, urbanisation and changing settlement patterns. Maile says every rand spent replacing deliberately destroyed infrastructure is a rand that could have created additional classroom capacity, maintained another school or expanded educational opportunities elsewhere: