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File Image of a school.
Parents of learners enrolled at Tsandzanani Primary School in Matsulu, in Mpumalanga, are appealing to the provincial Education Department, to finish the school project.
They say the school was left incomplete in 2014, with a shortage of six classrooms, toilets, a library and an administrative block.
The school is struggling with overcrowded classrooms. These learners say, they are now learning under trees, after they were recently removed from their dilapidated mobile classrooms due to health and safety concerns.
“Our classrooms are not enough, and these mobile classrooms are very old. They have holes and there are snakes. The school is lacking. We are also concerned about the toilets, and we did ask the MEC that we can convert the toilets to waterborne toilets because we do have a borehole and we are still waiting for a response,” says a learner.
“Today in the mobile classes, a teacher was bitten by a bug and she was rushed to the clinic. We decided to removed the learners from the mobile classrooms due to safety concerns,” says another learner.
Meanwhile, the provincial Education Department spokesperson, Gerald Sambo says the department decided not to build the remaining classrooms, as there is a school adjacent to this with unoccupied classrooms.
“Communities needs to understand that when we provide resources as a department, we are providing to ensure that it is maximally used by the beneficiaries of which in this case is the learners and there is Phumalanga next door to Tsandzanani that has got eight empty classrooms. We’ve spoken to the Students’ Governing Body (SGB), we have spoken to the school to say if there is capacity at a nearby school, let them transfer the learners who are in excess to the nearby school so that they also benefit from learning under conducive environment,” says Sambo.
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