Knee-jerk reaction to ECD schools disastrous

THE Early Childhood Association of Zimbabwe is concerned with the ongoing blitz by government on unregistered schools in Harare after the expiry of the 48hour regularisation ultimatum issued by Harare Metropolitan Affairs and Devolution secretary Tafadzwa Muguti last week in the absence of clear registration guidelines.

We take note that the laws of Zimbabwe require infant schools to register and concede that the majority of our members are not registered despite being operational. We, however, implore the government to relax some of the requirements such as land size required to register an infant school. We believe we are complementing government efforts in providing basic education which is a right for every child. This is in light of the government's admission that there is a deficit of 2 000 schools.

We implore the government to put in place a clear procedure for registration of infant schools, starting from local government level up to the Primary and Secondary

Education ministry.

The bottlenecks faced by our members start at the local government level where registration is supposed to start with the health and environmental inspections, change of use from residential to business for those operating from residential houses. The minimum standards used also differ between local authorities and it is our position that these standards need to be revised.

We further implore the government to give our members a three-month regularisation period considering the time needed for health and environmental inspections and in some cases applying for change of use of land in order to obtain a health permit.

The permit is one of the requirements for obtaining a licence.

We foresee a crisis when schools open next week since most children will not be able to enjoy their right to education in light of the closure of most schools. The registered schools are not enough to absorb thousands of children who will be affected by closure of unregistered schools. This, in our view, will make more children vulnerable to abuse as they become idle at home. We urge our members to co-operate with the authorities. We believe it is only engagement that can take us out of this crisis.

We have, however, taken note of agents masquerading as “consultants” who have mushroomed to organise workshops and offer consultancy services on the pretext that they can facilitate the registration of infant schools. We kindly urge our members to be cautious of these unscrupulous individuals who are taking advantage of the situation to extort them of their hard-earned money.

Early Childhood Association of Zimbabwe

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