Online Reporter
The obtaining situation at Mahatshula Primary School, a Bulawayo City Council-run school where authorities have been forced to resort to hot-sitting due to a critical shortage of classrooms, is unacceptable.
According to the school headmistress Mrs Thobekile Siziba, the shortage of classrooms forced the school authorities to introduce hot- sitting.
She said the school with an enrolment of 1 216 pupils urgently needs an additional 10 blocks of two classrooms each.
“Due to a shortage of classrooms Early Child Development learners as well as Grades 2 to 4 pupils attend classes in the afternoon from 12PM to 5PM,” said Mrs Siziba.
This is the worst time of the day for infants to attend classes and there is therefore urgent need to correct this anomaly.
Bulawayo City Council has an obligation to build additional classrooms or alternatively another primary school in Mahatshula suburb.
Parents of these pupils that are being forced to attend classes at awkward hours, are BCC’s ratepayers.
Primary and Secondary Education Minister Torerayi Moyo who visited the school on Wednesday, said Government was prioritising construction of additional classrooms at schools such as Mahatshula Primary School.
We are however, of the view that given Government’s competing priorities, council should address the classroom shortage at its own school.
Government has since independence built hundreds of both primary and secondary schools throughout the country to ensure that every child is within walking distance to the nearest school.
The settler regime had put in place a bottleneck system for the blacks’ education so that very few blacks could go beyond high school hence there were very few schools in both urban and rural areas.
The Smith regime also introduced a rigorous screening system which started at primary school level and as such many pupils failed to proceed to secondary school.
At Form Two the pupils were subjected to another screening and this was again done at Form Four and Six resulting in very few pupils proceeding to institutions of higher learning such as colleges and the only university available then.
This was a deliberate policy by the colonial government to deny blacks education so that they continued to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.
It was because of the skewed education policy that Government at independence immediately embarked on a programme to build schools in both urban and rural areas while also increasing the number of colleges and universities.
Most pupils are now within walking distance of either primary or secondary school.
The thrust now is to improve the quality of education hence we call upon local authorities such as BCC to ensure the quality of education is not compromised by shortage of classrooms as is the case at Mahatshula Primary School.
Schools should have adequate classrooms to avoid hot-sitting.
We want, at this juncture, to also appeal to the private sector to assist local authorities and Government to expand infrastructure at schools in order to create a conducive learning environment.
The National Handling Services (NHS) set a good example last year when it handed over a fully furnished classroom block to Mujiji Primary School in Bubi district, Matabeleland North province as part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative.
We therefore call upon other companies to emulate this progressive gesture and invest in the country’s future.
