‘Provide valuable information on gassing’

SCHOOL managers should readily provide information about people involved in gassing innocent learners, the Joint Operations Committee in Central province has advised.

The committee said school managers should not conceal information from the security wings relating to people involved in gassing in learning institutions.

Provincial Joint Operations Committee (PJOC) chairperson, Brigadier-General, Christopher Mwaba, said it was security forces were keen to handle any information so that they could round up all masterminds of the gassing.

Gen Mwaba who is Zambia Army Brigade Commander in Central province, said this following a gassing incident at Bwacha Secondary School in Kabwe, where the deputy head allegedly hid a person suspected to have gassed his fellow pupils.

Gen Mwaba explained that when a classroom was gassed, he and the other officers rushed to Bwacha but the deputy head-teacher present insisted that the incident could not have happened at the school.

He said after a few days later it was revealed through one of the affected pupils that the deputy head-teacher knew the girl who gassed the other pupils at the school.

Gen Mwaba was speaking in Kabwe during a sensitisation meeting on the need to intensify security in schools held at Angelina Tembo.

“I appeal to teachers looking after the children because they are also the target, once these incidences happen in your schools, we want to get to the bottom of how this thing is being done. The people who are spraying these chemicals in schools are students.

“I will give you an example when we had this incidence at Bwacha Secondary School, I went there with my soldiers and indeed we found these children under a tree all of them failing to breathe. I found the deputy head who told us that the incident didn’t happened in school but the children told us that it happened in school and we left,” he said.

Gen Mwaba said instead of the security wings concentrating on finding who was providing the harmful chemical, they were faced with the task of handling instant justice mobs.

The Brigade Commander urged residents to comply with order at night and allow officers to search them.

“Yes some of the people that we find working recklessly at night would be shaken a bit to that they create time for us to operate. We have noticed that there are no people after 20:00 hours and we hope it continues like that,” Gen Mwaba said.

Speaking earlier, Central province Minister, Sydney Mushanga urged the school managers to ensure that there was a security presence not only at the entry point but around the school at all times.

The Minister further instructed that all the people entering schools should be searched including teachers, learners and visitors.