Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga on Sunday condemned the arson attack on yet another school in Malamulele, Limpopo.
“Last year the administration block was torched at the same school. The destruction of school infrastructure in this manner undermines the progress we are making in this area of our work,” she said.
The school at Mukhomi village near Malamulele was set alight in the early hourse of Sunday morning. Police received a report from members of the community at about 2.30am, Brigadier Motlafela Mojapelo said.
“Police received information in the early hours of this morning [Sunday] and on arrival, three classrooms and a staff room were on fire.” The local fire brigade was summoned and the fire was extinguished. A case of arson had been opened and fire investigators from the police forensic division in Pretoria were expected to visit the school to help with the investigation, Mojapelo said.
At least 24 schools in the Vuwani area have been destroyed or damaged by protesters demanding their own municipality instead of being included in the new municipality.
In a statement on Sunday on the outcomes of the Council of Education Ministers (CEM) meeting held in Pretoria earlier in the week, Motshekga said immense progress had been made in the delivery of school infrastructure across the country.
The department had set a target to deliver basic services to all schools as per the requirement of the minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure, she said.
“The norms and standards are meant to ensure that we create a conducive environment for learning by ensuring that all schools have adequate structures and that they get basic services like electricity, water, and sanitation.
“The department continues to unveil state-of-the-art schools every week, built or refurbished at a cost of between R35 million and R50 million. These schools have been built or refurbished as part of the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative, or ASIDI, which was established with the purpose of eradicating and replacing schools built, in their entirety, from inappropriate material and to provide basic services to schools that previously had none,” Motshekga said.
Since the programme’s inception, the initiative had led to the completion of just over 170 schools out of a targeted 510 around the country, with 126 of them situated in the Eastern Cape. A further 126 schools were at various stages of implementation and 54 of those schools would be completed in the course of the 2016/17 financial year.
The ASIDI programme also included a basic services component over and above the school building programme. To this end, an additional 615 schools had been provided with water, 418 with decent sanitation, and 307 with electricity. This programme was ongoing.
“While a lot of progress has been made, the department is mindful of the fact that a lot still needs to be done ensure that the dignity of learners is restored,” she said.
The ASIDI was in addition to the schools being built and refurbished at the provincial education department level and schools being built from the school infrastructure grant. In areas where urgent interventions were needed, the department continued to collaborate with key partners such as the water and sanitation department to ensure that basic services were rolled out to distressed schools.
“In schools where water supply remains a challenge, we are implementing immediate interventions like the harvesting of rainwater, deploying mobile water tankers, among others, to ensure our learners have drinking water and are able to wash their hands,” Motshekga said.
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