Khayelitsha School Governing Bodies (KSGB) have called for the “beef up” of safety at schools with “quality security personnel” to avoid school vandalism and burglary.
They also called on community structures to take “responsibility” for their schools, saying they belong to the people.
KSGBs was reacting to an announcement by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) that 48 incidents of burglary or vandalism were reported during the December/January holidays.
The incidents affected 42 schools.
A range of items was stolen or damaged.
The items included bathroom fixtures, water piping, water pumps and meters, drain covers, fencing, windows and doors, computers, IT and audio-visual equipment and cabling, lights and electrical equipment, kitchen appliances and tools, bicycles, garden tools and consumables like toilet paper and black bags.
Kerry Mauchline, the spokesperson for Western Cape Minister of Education David Maynier, said even fencing, security guards, and cameras were not enough to stop criminals from sabotaging our children’s education.
She said the increase occurred while the department had provided security at 439 schools. “The increase of these incidents is from 41 incidents affecting 34 schools reported during the previous end-of-year holidays,” she said.
Mauchline said the total cost of repairs and replacing stolen items are still being calculated.
“It is disappointing that our department and our schools will once again have to divert funding that could have been spent on the educational needs of our learners to cover this entirely unnecessary cost. Arrests were made in relation to some of the incidents and we will closely monitor the progress of these cases,” she said.
KSGBs interim coordinator Makhaya Jezile said the challenge they had was the security personnel they were given to protect the schools.
“If you can go around Khayelitsha schools and look at the security personnel, you can easily see these people are not properly equipped. You can see that these people are the cheapest in their security grade,” he said.
Jezile said Khayelitsha schools were no-fee schools and this meant they could not afford to “pay” for security personnel.
“With all this said, we are also appealing to the different communities to take responsibility for the schools in their areas. The community structures need to be eyes and ears of the schools in their communities as at the end of the day it is their children that get impacted negatively,” said Jezile.
Mauchline said they again make this appeal to the public: “Do not underestimate your ability to thwart crime in our schools.”
She said reporting any suspicious activity in the vicinity of our schools to South African Police Services (Saps) or the Safe Schools hotline (0800 45 46 47) immediately can make all the difference in apprehending the perpetrators and recovering stolen property.
If you see something, speak up.
“There must be no place where the criminals targeting our schools can hide.”
