Refused. X. The city bosses responded to a Grahamstown primary school by blocking a march they'd planned to highlight their shocking plight. Six hundred pupils of Samuel Ntsiko Primary School, near Hlalani, continue to endure the humiliation of using their playground as a toilet.
Refused. X. The city bosses responded to a Grahamstown primary school by blocking a march they'd planned to highlight their shocking plight. Six hundred pupils of Samuel Ntsiko Primary School, near Hlalani, continue to endure the humiliation of using their playground as a toilet.
But in what could be a bittersweet conclusion to another year without running water in the school's bathrooms and kitchen, they've now been told it's a problem that could be solved in a matter of days.
There has been no municipal water supply to the school for the past year and the children and their teachers have been unable to practice basic hygiene, including washing their hands and cooking utensils. Because there's no water to flush the toilets, faecal matter and urine cover the only play area in the school.
Teachers say there are dangerous snakes in the long grass where the children must relieve themselves. Most damaging of all, said the school governing body in the statement of complaint they'd planned to hand over to the municipality, was the sheer humiliation of attending school in unsanitary conditions.
The processes followed by the school to get the municipality to address the problem date back to 2011. According to the school's statement, the problem was raised with the municipality's engineering services department in 2011 and plumbers visited the school on several occasions to explore the problem, but there was no communication with the school regarding progress.
Early this year it was suggested that the problem was that the school’s water supply pipes were leaking. By June, the school had replaced all of the water supply pipes at a cost of around R12 000. They notified Makana's engineering services, but still saw no action.
In September engineering services said the water could not be reconnected until a valve had been replaced.
CIty Hall bosses have now deftly sidestepped the potential embarrassment of having 600 children between the ages of 4 and 14 by promising that instead, no less than the acting Municipal Manager and the Mayor would meet with the school management.
After no fewer than five meetings and a personal plea to the Mayor, on Wednesday municipal officials met representatives from Samuel Ntsiko Primary School's governing body – who heard that the problem could be solved in a matter of days.
The School Governing Body's (SGB) chairperson Ntombekhaya Adam had submitted an official application form to Makana Municipality requesting permission to march from the school to the City hall on Monday this week. A signed letter from the municipality dated 09 November, of which Grocott's Mail has a copy, refused the school permission to organise the march.
Speaking to Grocott's Mail yesterday acting municipal manager Thembinkosi Myalato said the meeting with the school principal and SGB had yielded good results. He said the municipality would hand over a commitment letter to the school yesterday, promising them that the problem would be fixed by today.
Myalato told Grocott's Mail this week that he had not heard anything about the march. He had received a report about the school's water problems on Monday and subsequently sent municipal staff to investigate.
Responding to questions about the refusal for the march, Myalato said the application letter had been signed by the head of administration, Ettiene Major. "It was an oversight issue. He (Major) was basically saying that the matter needed to be discussed before the march could happen," Myalato said.
He said a team was at the school working on the problem since Wednesday adding that he was confident that the problem would be fixed by today. Education Department spokesman Malibongwe Mtima had not responded to questions about the problem at the time of going to press.
