Durban — Corinth Senior Primary School, which is said to have been closed for more than two months due to infrastructure issues, has been reopened.
DA in KwaZulu-Natal education spokesperson Dr Imran Keeka said: “While the DA in KZN welcomes the resumption of classes at Corinth Senior Primary in the Harry Gwala District, we are concerned that it took such a long time to resolve this matter.
“The most prejudiced are the learners who have lost an enormous amount of class time while the MEC (Mbali Frazer) and her department were sitting on their hands.”
Keeka said that providing additional resources to get things going was neither a favour to the pupils nor an achievement for the department.
“We do not praise fish for swimming. It was their duty as the government to act, and act swiftly, which they did not do,” Keeka said.
He added that it was hoped that there would be a proper and resourced catch-up plan that was urgently developed to ensure that pupils were not disadvantaged further, and that repair work on the roof of the school would not take 10 years while a generation of pupils languished in mobile classrooms.
“It is rather habitual for the Taliban-led ANC in KZN to drag its feet on issues of urgency related to service delivery,” Keeka said.
Earlier this month, the Daily News reported that pupils had not been attending classes for more than two months after parents and members of the school governing body (SGB) shut down the school, demanding renovations to the infrastructure.
School governing body chairperson Ntombi Dlamini said that the school’s structure and infrastructure could have fallen on to the pupils at any time.
Dlamini said that since the start of the year, pupils had been exposed to sunlight and rain and all kinds of weather.
Then in April, parents decided to lock the gates, and they woke up every morning to make sure that no pupil or school staff entered the premises.
At the time of reporting, KZN Department of Education spokesperson Sihle Mlotshwa said the department had called on the district administration to investigate the issue and give a report.
The school accommodates more than 429 pupils from Grade R to Grade 7.
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Daily News