Blind school evicted from offices
28 members at Cannon Rocks facility stranded after rent not paid
ALITTLE-KNOWN school for the blind has been kicked out of the premises it rents in Cannon Rocks for non-payment of rent.
The school, Konwaba Training Institute, which is operated by an East London businesswoman, Nandipa Bhayi, is situated at Ndlambe Municipality’s conference centre complex in Cannon Rocks. The centre was a white elephant for several years until the municipality awarded a business contract to an agent to run the facility.
With the abrupt closure of the school, 28 blind people and two others who are wheelchair-bound had to be removed from the school last Friday, leaving their belongings and wheelchairs behind.
Bhayi yesterday confirmed that they had been removed from the centre due to non-payment of rent. The school owes R150000 rent to Siwelele Co-Operative.
The co-operative’s deputy chairman, Cecil Wentzel yesterday confirmed the closure, saying Bhayi had not been forthcoming with rent payments for some time.
“We had to remove them [blind members] from the chalets and put them in the place’s hall, but after she again failed to pay us on Friday, we had no option but to remove all of them and lock the place,” Wentzel said. When TotT’s sister newspaper the Daily Dispatch visited the centre last Friday afternoon they found it padlocked. All 28 students, who are from Cape Town, East London, Port Alfred and some other parts of the country, were gone.
A vehicle believed to belong to Bhayi was locked inside the premises by the landlord.
“We will keep that vehicle until we reach some sort of an agreement with her,” Wentzel said.
The clothes, including blankets and wheelchairs for the students had to be taken to the nearest police station by police and South African Council for the Blind (SACB) officials, who responded after hearing the news of the closure.
Lutho Xintolo of SACB said it was bad for Bhayi not to be paying rent while she was taking money from the students. “These students were paying money to be here and they expected to get education as promised by Bhayi.”
Bhayi confirmed she was struggling to keep up with rent payments. “It’s a struggle that we are facing and if we are not getting a vacant government building to use for these students, we will close the school,” she said.
If our sponsors are not coming forward, we face these predicaments,” she said. Asked which sponsors she was referring to, Bhayi refused to divulge their identities. Another SACB official, Thandile Butana, said they didn’t believe anything that Bhayi said. “Our wish is that these students can be taken to better places and not be part of this. It’s painful to see a blind person suffering because of things like these,” Butana said.