Schools don’t need clean

That we do not know what the future holds has moved from being a platitude to a fact. We have heard our president saying we are moving into unprecedented times, but decisions made now will determine the nature of those times.

The cautious creep towards level 3 of the lockdown has been largely regulated by the risk of the coronavirus to the public health. However, irrational decisions stemming from this will affect the future detrimentally.

No-one has a bigger future, hopefully, than our children. They have no say in the matter of when schools, their ticket to the future, will reopen; nor do their parents. But when the opening of schools is delayed by having to deep-clean and fumigate every school in the country, as is demanded by some unions, an irrational measure is being taken that threatens the future of our children.

Even if the virus had spread to schools before they closed, after being empty for nearly nine weeks any trace of the virus has gone. Why must every school be deep-cleaned? Not only does this delay the resumption of education, it wastes a vast amount of money the government could rather put into preventing children being exposed to the virus en route to and within schools. That few children contract the virus makes the cleaning drive another case of governmental overkill.

Yet the demand that all schools be fumigated and disinfected is one among a large number of “non-negotiables” that must be met before teachers are prepared to return to school. Roger Graham

Cape Town