Official neglect penalises pupils
The Mail & Guardian visited three schools in Gauteng that do not have electricity and adequate water supplies and sanitation.
Lufhereng Secondary School
The school is in a relatively new RDP area in Soweto, into which people started moving in 2010. It was built as a primary school in 2012, but when another primary school was built nearby three years ago, the original school became a high school.
The school has neither running water nor electricity. It should receive 17000 litres of water every day, but delivery is erratic. The school relies on water tanks.
The chair of the school’s governing body, Sarah Bloom, said when school opened in January, water was not delivered for more than a week.
“When we do not have water, we are forced to send kids home early because we can’t keep them here without water. Sometimes the ladies who [are employed to] cook go out with buckets and ask for water at people’s homes just for the kids to drink and for them to cook. But people complain and they refuse to provide water for the school.
“We don’t want these tanks. The water is not healthy and sometimes pupils complain that it is murky. And how can it not be murky because, for the many years they have been here, they [the tanks] have never been cleaned,” Bloom said.
To save water, the school does not allow pupils to use the flush toilets; only the teachers may. Instead, the 496 pupils use 27 mobile toilets, which are drained once a week, and employs a cleaner to clean them.
“If we allowed the pupils to use the toilets, we would run out of water quickly as it does not get delivered every day,” Bloom said.
But not having electricity is the school’s biggest hurdle because it affects the academic programme. Although there is an illegal connection, it is not viable. The cable burns out almost every week and has to be replaced.
When this happens, the school has to go to neighbouring schools for tasks such as photocopying.
“We have become a burden to other schools. Recently pupils had to wait for hours to write exams because there was no electricity and we were forced to go to another school to photocopy the exam papers for grades nine, 10 and 11,” said Bloom.
“What kind of education are our children supposed to get without proper services? What is frustrating is that department officials are aware of the school’s conditions and, to date, we do not know why we have not received these services.
“Perhaps they do not care about our children’s education because theirs go to better schools,” she said.
The City of Johannesburg said the Gauteng education department needed to apply to Johannesburg Water for a water connection. This was done and Johannesburg Water provided the department with a quote — on April 22 2014. But the department did not pay for the connection while the quote was valid, so it has to reapply for a quote and provide Johannesburg Water with proof of payment before the connection can be made.
According to the city, the department has not applied to City Power for an electrical connection for the school.
The acting spokesperson for the Gauteng education department, Oupa Bodibe, said City Power had requested a site development plan (SDP) for the school.
“However, for the department to get an SDP, the [provincial] department of human settlements has to appoint a town planner to develop the SDP and, as such, we have applied for same,” he said.
Bodibe did not comment about a water connection for the school.
Goza Primary School
Piles of faeces litter the school’s yard. This is where pupils sometimes have to defecate when there is no water to flush the toilets.
The school has no running water and the 1042 pupils and 30 teachers depend on the 20000 litres of water delivered to tanks at the school every day. But sometimes the water runs out before 11am and the children are sent home early.
When the M&G visited the school, two women employed under the government’s Expanded Public Works Programme to clean the toilets made several trips to the water tanks to fill the 20-litre buckets they use to flush the three blocks of toilets used by the pupils. Sometimes they need to use two buckets of water to flush a single toilet because of the excessive buildup of excrement when the water has run out.
The school also does not have electricity and depends on a generator, which services only the administration block.
Recently, parents marched to the department’s offices to submit a memorandum about these problems.
The school was built more than five years ago in an informal settlement in Freedom Park, south of Johannesburg, and is adjacent to the Somelulwazi Primary School, which has water and electricity. The schools are separated by a concrete wall.
According to the city, a water connection could only be provided via Somelulwazi, which would then be billed for the consumption of both schools. But Johannesburg Water told the city that business rules prevented it from providing a second connection on the same farm portion without building plans, and the city had no records of plans.
The education department needs to apply for the existing electricity connection to Somelulwazi to be upgraded because the existing connection cannot supply both schools.
Bodibe said the department had sent a letter to the city “mandating” it to rezone and subdivide the farm where the school is situated.
Protea Glen Primary School
The school is one of two schools in the province that were built using alternative construction methods and was opened last year in January.
Although the M&G was not allowed to view the school’s facilities, it learned from parents that it does not have running water or electricity.
One, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said the school has an illegal electrical connection to a neighbouring home.
“It doesn’t make sense why a school will stand without water and electricity. The school has been here for over a year ... and yet there is no electricity,” the parent said.
Another parent said most parents in the area took their children to better-resourced schools in Lenasia, because they did not want their children learning in an environment without basic services.