Pretoria - The Gauteng Department of Education has placed infrastructure interventions at the top of its priorities, as it embarks on emergency repairs and renovations due to burglaries, vandalism and arson attacks to 120 schools last year.
Indicative that infrastructure interventions were critical and essential was 24 cases of vandalism occurring during the December holidays alone.
This places pressure on the the stress of placing new pupils in Grade 1 and 8, and the provision of new mobile classes needed to address overcrowding.
MEC for Education Matome Chiloane said vandalism included a variety of damage and theft of school property, and repairs to vandalised schools had been ongoing since October last year.
With hundreds of thousands of pupils returning to school for the 2023 academic year yesterday, Chiloane said it was fortunate that none of the 120 schools were closed because of vandalism.
He said a total of 488 schools were receiving day-to-day infrastructure maintenance.
About 67 emergency provisions of water were supplied to schools through filled water tanks, while 20 emergency sanitation units were provided to schools to alleviate shortage.
Vandalism and theft that takes place in schools affects not only the physical structure and electronic devices like computers and laptops, but furniture and learning and teaching materials.
Fortunately, the department keeps investing in these resources to ensure learning is not hampered, he said.
Chiloane said furniture to the value of R180 million was procured during the financial 2021-22 year and most deliveries were completed to 459 primary and 267 secondary schools.
He said 193 primary and 62 secondary schools had already received furniture during the current academic year.
Learning and teaching materials like textbooks were finalised in November last year, but due to the theft of stationery experienced by schools during December school holidays, three schools arranged to receive deliveries this January, just two days before schools re-opening.
Tshwane has not been spared from the vandalism of schools. Two classrooms at MJ Mgidi Secondary School in Soshanguve caught fire in October last year and everything inside was burnt to ashes.
In April 2020, Soshanguve High School experienced a fire that frustrated the school governing body because it was the forth school to be burnt in that week.
A few days before that there was a fire in Phuthanang Primary School and Amogelang and Lathabong Secondary Schools.
Pretoria News