MSHOLOZI – Hiking on the R40 to school for learners of Msholozi, Phumlani and Hopeville is now a thing of the past following the implimentation of additional scholar transport.
This comes as a relief to the learners and their parents, as they will now be at school, in class and learning like their peers from other areas.
It will be unlike the previous week when the learners spent the whole week not going to school due to lack of adequate scholar transport in the area.
“In a bid to ensure that learners are ferried safely to and from school, the Department of Public Works, Roads and Transport has been working around the clock to monitor the scholar-transport system in the area in order to address the shortages,” explained
Ms Magdalene Matentshi, assistant manager: media liaison and monitoring unit.
She mentioned that a fourth bus had been added to ferry the 347 learners from this area to Cyril Clark Secondary in Mataffin outside Mbombela.
This swift move by the department comes after learners from the village acted in solidarity and boycotted using the then available three buses which were not sufficient to ferry all of them.
The boycott took a week during which learners did not attend school.
According to the Department of Education’s spokesman, Mr Jasper Zwane, the problem was mainly caused by some parents who registered their children in January as opposed to the timelines set by the department.
“This made it difficult to know exactly how many learners needed the required resources,” Zwane said.
Issues of scholar transport in the province are managed by the department of roads and transport, and currently more than 63 000 learners use scholar transport daily, with the Gert Sibande region having 42 475 learners which is the highest number using scholar transport, followed by Nkangala region with 13 846, Ehlanzeni region with 5 242 and Bohlabela with only 1 724 learners.
