Prominent educational publishing company Via Afrika announced yesterday that it had begun consultations with staff to wind down the business, reports News24.

CEO Christina Watson stated that the company was unsuccessful in getting its books approved during the submission for the Foundation Phase (grades one to three) school textbooks.

‘This resulted in the write-off of our investment in the submission project, which amounted to millions.’

The jobs of possibly half the staff at Maskew Miller Learning (MML) could be on the line after the number of approvals it received from the Department of Basic Education for publishing new grade one to three textbooks was ‘significantly below expectations’.

The company, which has been in business for more than 130 years, employs 158 permanent and two fixed-term employees.

MML, which forwarded more than 1 600 submissions for screening and evaluation to the department, received 471 approvals. It spent more than R40m to create the submitted materials.

News24 reported last week that publishing company Lighthouse Publishers, which stands to make more than R285m producing textbooks and learning and teaching support materials, was registered three days after the contract specifications were issued.

The company was awarded just over a quarter (26%) of the total approvals for the publishing of textbooks and other learning materials.

A total of 6 385 titles submitted by 19 publishers were approved for publishing, with the total cost of the orders estimated at R1.6bn.

Hours after the story broke, the Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, asked Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to have the National Treasury investigate possible irregularities in the procurement process for textbooks for grade one to three pupils.

Full News24 report