A dilapidated Limpopo school may be further ravaged by tropical storm Dineo as she makes her way through the region this weekend.
While schools in Tzaneen and Muyexe Village in Giyani have been closed due to the storm, teachers and parents at Dzimauli Secondary School in Folovhodwe village outside Masisi already feel hopeless as learners have been taught in run-down classrooms that have no roofs for the past five years.
Parents and teachers say for years they have been complaining about the shoddy state of the school infrastructure which now poses danger to their children.
They claim they have challenged the Limpopo department of basic education only for their pleas to fall on deaf ears.
“When it is windy or it rains we have to send learners home as there is no way we can keep them inside the classrooms. They are forced to lose some days of learning because of the roofless classrooms,” says school principal Julius Ramphabana.
The buildings are worn out and parts of the ceiling structures in most classrooms have started falling off.
Ramphabana adds: “We have reported the matter to the department of education but nothing has been done to address the situation. This leaves us with no other choice but to make do with these dilapidated buildings as lessons have to continue.”
Ramphabana further highlights that most learners at the school are scared to attend classes or let alone concentrate during lessons.
Since the beginning of this year, the learners at Dzimauli Secondary School have already lost several days of learning because of rain in Limpopo.
Some days they are forced to mop out water inside their classrooms before lessons start.
Last month President Jacob Zuma assured provincial MECs, educators and principals at the Department of Basic Education Lekgotla that the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative Project, which aims to eradicate mud schools and improve infrastructure, had made inroads.
But this has left little comfort to members of the community.
Limpopo Department of Education spokesman Dr Naledzani Rasila says the department has an infrastructure plan and is working according to a budget.
“At the moment we don’t have enough budget to accommodate schools. There are more than 120 schools that need to be renovated and cannot all be done at the same time, so we have to work according to the plan,” he says.
Rasila says their department is also in the process of building more classrooms.
This week Equal Education tweeted: “We will no longer accept learners learning under trees or worse dying in pit toilets. #FixOurSchools.”