The DA is particularly concerned with the safety of learners and school staff whilst they are on school premises due to the spate of crime incidents which have recently made headlines.
Schools which were once declared as safe places for children have been turned into crime scenes.
These are just some of the crime incidents that have been reported over the last few weeks:
• This week, the deputy principal of Edalinceba Primary School in Duduza, Ekurhuleni was shot and killed in his office at the school;
• Earlier this month a patroller from Madibane Comprehensive High School in Diepkloof Soweto was shot dead during a robbery of smart boards at the school;
• Just this past week, a 13 year-old learner from Ekurhuleni died of injuries sustained while being bullied on school grounds; and
• A general worker from Skeen Primary School in Alexandra was shot inside the school premises.
The extent to which violence, bullying and murder is now so prevalent in our schools is very worrying, yet both the Gauteng Department of Community Safety and Department of Education are not doing enough to address this issue.
The Department of Community Safety’s patrollers placed at various schools are not trained to deal with the severity of bullying, fighting, drugs and various other crimes that take place on the school grounds on a daily basis.
These patrollers do not have resources such as torches, panic buttons and access to telephones in order to report crime immediately. This programme is wholly inadequate to deal with the enormity of the problem facing our schools.
Schools infrastructure is poor, in most schools there is no fence or the fence is broken making it easy for criminals to gain access to the schools. Some schools do not have panic buttons, alarms and electric fences. Many schools in the province do not have security guards due to a lack of financial resources.
We task both MEC Panyaza Lesufi from the Department of Education and MEC Sizakele Nkosi-Malobane from the Department of Community Safety to ensure that they strengthen security fixtures in our schools.
We will hold both MECs accountable if anything happens to our children, teachers, general workers or patrollers while they are in our schools.