Members of the South African Congress of Early Childhood Development (SACECD) marched to the City of Tshwane Municipality headquarters (Tshwane House) on Tuesday to demand the relaxation or total scrapping of what they refer to as harsh by-laws that have been imposed on them by the Municipality.
SACECD is a representative body of early childhood development organisations nationally.
The SACECD members marched from the old Marabastad bus depot to Tshwane House singing, toyi-toying and carrying placards and dolls.
According to SACECD Regional Chairperson Julia Ngobeni, SACECD members have many challenges that have been created for them by the City of Tshwane, especially in the form of the the by-laws.
“We are here to submit a memorandum to City of Tshwane MMC for Social Services Kholofelo Morodi because the present by-laws governing early childhood development centres don’t favour us at all and there are some documents which are needed when one tries to register an early childhood development centre, and these documents are difficult to obtain, so that makes it difficult for us to comply,” explained Ngobeni.
“The so-called consent use document is the major problem because each time we apply for registration of our centres we are told that we must submit it, yet this very consent use document takes too long to obtain and costs us lots of money,” she said.
She said the consent use document costs around R90 000, can take four to five years to obtain and while they wait for it to be given to them by the Municipality children at early childhood development centres suffer, because the centres can’t operate properly without the so-called consent use document.
She said the cause of the delay in issuing the consent use document is that it has to go through various City of Tshwane departments for a stamp of approval and in some departments it just gets stuck and ignored by officials who must give it a stamp of approval.
She added that health inspectors won’t issue early childhood development centres with health certificates if they don’t have the said consent use document.
“We demand that the City of Tshwane must soften the by-laws that they have imposed on us; give title deeds to all adopt-a-spot early childhood development centres; give health certificates to all early childhood development centres even when they are conditional ones, and allow health inspectors to come to our centres because presently the inspectors don’t assess early childhood centres that don’t possess the consent use document,” lamented Ngobeni.
Happy Hours Day Care Centre owner Maria Ditlhakanyane from Ga-Rankuwa also decried the so-called consent use document and revealed that in the past it used to cost over R100 000 to obtain it from the City of Tshwane, but has now been reduced to R90 000.
Be that as it may, Ditlhakanyane still feels that the amount is too high and that the process of obtaining the document is too slow.
She lamented the fact that even those that have consent use document have been ordered to apply for new ones as the ones that they are having now are too old.
“I obtained my consent use document in 2011 and reapplying for it again is going to cost me lots of money, we have been promised that the so-called consent use document will be scrapped but presently it has not been scrapped, we don’t have money, we don’t have funding and health inspectors won’t issue us with health certificates if we don’t have the consent use documents, and without the health certificate an early childhood development centre won’t get funding anywhere,” she explained.
She also said by-laws must be the same in all areas of Tshwane because at the moment by-laws that are used in the Pretoria CBD are not the same as those used in areas like Ga-Rankuwa and Hammanskraal regarding early childhood development centres.
Sthembile Early Learning Centre owner Lizzy Mbewa from Olivenhoutbosch complained that she started her centre in 2012 but due to City of Tshwane by-laws she hasn’t experienced progress in her work.
She revealed that she is the chairperson of the Olivenhoutbosch early childhood development centres forum and that she leads owners of 59 centres and only six centres are able to get funding.
She explained that people like her live in RDP areas, their yards are very small and that it is ridiculous for the Municipality by-laws to demand that there must be things like car parking area and two teachers if there are 30 children in a classroom.
“How are we going to be able to pay those teachers because we don’t have funding and our communities don’t have money, they are poor communities?” she asked.
“We are doing great work even if we happen to be early childhood development centres that are based in poor communities; our learners are more advanced than those of Grade R at schools; they can read and write and Grade 1 teachers at schools are impressed about them,” she said as she in the process called for the relaxation of the by-laws so that their centres can comply and get funding.
Nkele Mailula from Ekangala said she has been running her centre for five years now and that it is situated in Bubezini, which is a new undeveloped settlement area which health inspectors won’t visit in order to assess their centres, and this makes it impossible for them to get health certificates.
Another early childhood development centre owner sent the following message to the City of Tshwane:
“We are asking for the relaxation of the by-laws, we are helping the kids, this is all about the kids, so if you help us to comply we will definitely comply by all means instead of oppressing us with harsh by-laws.”