Huge need for winter school uniforms

THE WINTER season is approaching, and the state of school infrastructure in South Africa is alarmingly poor. Poor families face the same dilemma every winter: to provide heat or food?

If you add to that the need for winter school uniforms to keep the kids warm while they are away from home, studying, this becomes a three-way deadlock. Just like those parents or guardians, we are faced with a choice: either glorify the magnitude of the problem at the start of each academic year or propose practical solutions.

The Competition Commission intervenes to regulate fair competitive behaviour and enforces guidelines, such as the accessibility of school uniforms through competitive and trans-bidding measures. However, the anti-competitiveness in the textile and manufacturing industry persists, and parents, especially those from economically and socially disadvantaged backgrounds, continue to struggle.

According to recent statistics from Statistics SA, the unemployment rate increased by 1.7 percentage points to 32.5% this year, and the rate is particularly higher among black Africans (36.5%) compared to other population groups. Although parents have the option of taking their children to state schools, they cannot afford the ever-increasing cost of uniforms each year, because their income affords them a basic living standard.

The winter season is approaching, and the state of school infrastructure is alarmingly poor. As such, Amnesty International, an NGO focusing on human rights, released a report last year addressing education. Schools in the Eastern Cape and Gauteng were singled out as having the worst conditions.

In an attempt at addressing the poor conditions, it is important that corporates, philanthropists and non-profit organisations come together and donate uniforms to disadvantaged schools in townships and rural areas, to ease the burden, especially this coming winter.

ASANDA MADIKANE, LATITA DEVELOPMENT TRUST | Qonce (King William’s Town)