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Young initiates.
The National Health Department has commended Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) Minister Velenkosini Hlabisa, for his efforts to regulate initiation schools.
This is after Hlabisa gazetted the fees payable to initiation schools in all nine provinces.
The fees are applicable for male and female initiates, their parents, as well as traditional surgeons involved in initiation practices.
While male and female initiates have separate fees in most provinces, the gazette states that no fees are due to traditional surgeons for female initiates.
The relevant fees are payable by a prospective initiate and their parents to the principal of an initiation school to attend the school.
Deputy Minister of Health Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, “I wanted to commend Minister Hlabisa for the stride that he’s taken to really improve, because what is it that we’re really trying to do, is to make sure that no young boy goes to a circumcision school and comes back dead. Over and above what they actually are putting in place, registered and unregistered initiation schools, is to really continue to take the advice that they get from health to saywithout interfering with the traditional circumcision process, but if those young boys can be exposed to advice from a healthcare worker, to say this one is fit or not fit, before they go to the initiation school.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTBc5W3TXCE
