’Hurry up and fix our unsafe schools’

IN August last year, the Centre for Child Law dragged the government back to court to compel it to produce comprehensive evidence of a plan to get rid of inappropriate structures serving as schools.

The Department of Basic Education had failed to deliver this plan as instructed by the High Court in Grahamstown in 2011.

Gwabe Primary School near the rural Eastern Cape town of Dutywa was one of eight schools listed as applicants in the matter.

Last month, the Centre for Child Law returned to court, this time to compel the government to put Gwabe Primary and 196 others on its priority list.

Department of Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said these 197 “micro“schools were in the process of being merged.

“Once this is completed, bigger schools will be built.”

The state had budgeted R8.2-billion for its Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Development Initiative to tackle the crisis, he said.

The department had so far spent R2.5-billion on the infrastructure project.

Although the department had failed to meet its target of fixing the 445 schools identified for repair within three years, he said, 108 schools had been fixed, 84 of them in the Eastern Cape.

“In addition to the 108 schools, 381 schools have been provided with water, 371 with sanitation and 289 with electricity, all of them for the first time.”

Cameron McConnachie of the Legal Resources Centre, acting on behalf of the schools, agreed that most of the remaining mud schools in the province had small enrolments.

But this, he said, was not an excuse to leave children in unsafe classrooms.

“Schools have exhausted all avenues in trying to get assistance. Mud schools could have been eradicated years ago had the department planned properly. The budget has been made available. If the department won’t produce the comprehensive plan, an independent entity must do it for them,” he said.—