Still no transport for Xesi’s small children

FRUSTRATED parents camped outside the scholar transport offices in Vincent’s Western Avenue in East London on Tuesday after being told the person to deal with their problem was not at work.

The parents, from Xesi location in Tsholomnqa, are distraught as their small children have for the past two months had to walk more than 14km a day or miss school. This is after their scholar transport was discontinued at the beginning of May amid a failure by the provincial government to pay transport operators.

The Dispatch reported plight earlier this month.

Parent Nomangesi Dama said they went this week to ask whether transport would be available for their children next term and the rest of the school year.

“The children have fallen behind with their schoolwork because they have been unable to get to their new school 7km away. They have to leave home early in the morning while it is still dark. Their lives are further at risk walking on the R72 with trucks and fast cars,” said Dama.

The education department on their closed their school, Mhala Public School, in April and merged it with Lungisa Primary School in Jojweni village.

The merger is part of a rationalisation programme to close small, unviable schools and merge them with better-resourced schools nearby.

The Daily Dispatch earlier reported that the parents were sacrificing their child support grants to hire transport for their children to commute to and from the new school.

Provincial department of transport spokeswoman Khuselwa Rantjie said her department was still working on finding a solution.

“In our engagement with parents we have agreed that we will communicate the progress by [today],” said Rantjie.

While 77 000 schoolchildren benefit from the taxpayer-funded scholar transport, another 30 000 across the province have to walk long distances to school as the transport department has no money to transport them.

Of those, 23 000 are from the Amathole district, which has the biggest number of beneficiaries of state-funded scholar transport. Joe Gqabi district has the fewest beneficiaries at just more than 6 000. —