Our government has made our children collateral damage in their refusal to engage the teachers and their union

It is now going into the fourth week since my children last attended school. This is equivalent to half of the summer holidays and two weeks more than the Easter holidays and one week more than the Christmas holidays. In a normal environment I would be made to answer a criminal charge for keeping my children away from school for so long.

I cited the above to highlight the gravity of the situation which our children are facing while the teachers’ strike continues and our government shows an alarming lack of leadership on this matter. The ease with which our government has made our children collateral damage in their refusal to engage the teachers and their union to attempt to resolve the strike is especially worrying.

It seems that in their quest to maintain political dominance they have forgotten that it was less than two years that our children lost over a year of education due to the COVID19 pandemic. At that time, the government and the world at large called it a worldwide catastrophe which would take a generation to recover. Fast forward to about 24 months later and our children are once more losing more than a third of a term’s teaching and counting. Isn’t this loss of education to the future nation builders of this country worrisome for the hierarchy of the country?

Editor, the longer it takes to deal with this strike the worse will be the consequence for our children. The government needs to put politics aside and find a way to end this strike and have our children back in school. We voted for the government to lead us, not ignore us and especially our children.