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Community members from Mtla-Khwethana locality in Ngqamakhwe have appealed to the Eastern Cape Department of Education to fulfil its promise of supplying them with five temporary structures.
These temporary structures will replace the dilapidated prefabs used by learners from Mtla-Khwethana Primary School as classrooms.
This was confirmed by one of the community members, Nowandile Nyalambisa (63), stating that even though this school is in bad condition, it is also used as the voting station by the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).
“This school was used by our parents before we were born. Ever since then we are still using those prefabs. The department had promised to give us five temporary structures but until now nothing is happening,” said Nyalambisa.
She added that their children are taking their kids to better places, and this minimises the number of learners in this school.
Nyalambisa confirmed that they heard rumours that their school may be merged with a neighbouring school, but they had not received that information from the department.
“The reason why we are fighting for this school is that our children are very safe; even if it is raining they are not crossing the river. There are four localities which send their children to our school because it is safe even if it is raining.”
The chairperson for the School Governing Body (SGB), Boniswa Daniso, said that this situation had led the members of the SGB to losing the trust of community members. She said that they think that they are not doing anything about this situation.
She added that they had gone several times to Bisho to ask for help, but were only given promises.
According to her, they were told that the temporary structures had arrived, but there is no transport for them.
“We are worried because the numbers are decreasing all the time, and we are afraid that the department might shut down our school, yet it is their fault. If they are merging it with another school, our children struggle because their schools are very far and they will be forced to cross the river.”
Spokesperson for the Department of Education, Mali Mtima, confirmed that the school had been identified as a needy school in 2021, and that in December there was a tender processing that was issued for all the schools that needed mobile classrooms.
“The problem with this school is that the numbers of learners are dropping instead of growing. This is a concern for the department; there should be discussions with the school on how best it can be to merge it because even the law says that the primary schools should have a minimum of 135 learners, but this one has only 75 learners,” said Mtima.
