LET’S PROTECT OUR KIDS

KIDS in early grades require special attention from both parents and school authorities.

Recklessness and trusting dubious people with your children can expose them to many dangers like emotional, sexual and physical abuse.

Young children should not be exposed to unnecessary trauma, which can take a lifetime to heal.

This could be the case with the 25 pupils from David Livingstone Primary School who were kidnapped by a kombi driver who normally drove them to and from home in Kuwadzana.

Reports say the pupils were found in Macheke when the vehicle ran out of fuel.

Further claims say they were driven around the city, Chitungwiza, and then Marondera

The kombi driver was then stuck in Macheke after cruising from Harare with the young children.

It took a concerned motorist’s good heart to inform the police of the kombi driver’s evil act, leading to his arrest.

The kids were taken to Marondera Hospital for medical examinations.

Although the kids were found alive, this shameless act has exposed the parents and school authorities’ flaws when it comes to the welfare of young pupils in early grades like EC B and A classes.

School authorities should be strict when it comes to people who bring and fetch our kids from school.

On the other end, parents should pick up and drop their children from school, especially those doing early grades like ECD B and A.

There is no excuse why parents should trust strangers with their kids as young as four and five years.

This amounts to total child neglect and abuse as some of these children still need maximum attention.

As parents, we should take full responsibility for our children all the time to avoid such cases.

In many cases, we have seen that kombi drivers carrying our children are reckless as they break traffic rules willy-nilly, which exposes young children to danger when these vehicles are involved in accidents.

The issue of proximity should also be enforced when parents are enrolling their children at various schools.

For instance, it is 18 kms from Harare city centre to Kuwadzana.

Surely, a child doing ECD B and A, should not travel 18 kms every day, which can make schooling boring.

It’s high time schools become strict on the issue of proximity when people want to enroll their children.

By enforcing this, we can minimise such cases for the safety of our children.

The fact that the parents of the 25 kids, who were kidnapped offered to send their children via a contracted kombi. has exposed their shortcomings.

People should enroll children in schools within their communities to avoid all this kind of drama.

It’s unfair for our kids to be subjected to these conditions.

We should also thank God that all these children ended up being alive because a lot of things could have happened to them.

We can only dread the worst case scenario.

These kids are the future of this country and need all the care we can give them.