Fears as north school ‘falls apart’

The SA teachers’s union (SAOU) has slammed the “dangerous” state of the Wonderboom South Primary School.

The union visited the school on Tuesday after the principal told its officials they reported their dire conditions to the basic education department (DBE) in 2018.

“On 30 September, the principal informed SAOU that the classes were unsafe due to open electrical cables hanging from the ceilings inside the classes and open switchboards with exposed electrical wires,” SAOU operational director Johan Kruger said.

He said the school had been without power since it reopened on 1 October.

“The administrative block can’t function,” Kruger said. 

“No effective steps have been implemented by the department to address or mitigate the potential hazard to the safety and health of learners and educators at the school despite the school’s building allegedly showing signs of severe structural deterioration.

“It seems that no lessons have been learned since the Hoerskool Driehoek tragedy,” Kruger said, referring to the Vanderbijlpark school where several learners died when a walkover collapsed of them earlier this year.

He called for immediate intervention from the minister and officials.

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Kruger said the principal had allegedly reported the “dire” conditions to the department at the beginning of 2018.

“The department visited the school and acknowledged the seriousness of the dangerous building infrastructure, however, a year has passed and the situation remains unchanged.”

He said the school was operating in contravention of the occupational health and safety act.

“Most recently, a team of workers did arrive at the school with a job card to rectify the infrastructure but it did not focus on any of the serious infrastructure dangers that the school had identified and reported,” Kruger said.

The team was assigned to do roof maintenance, which had allegedly already been completed.

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“The department also contracted so-called electricians to do maintenance work on the school’s electricity installations [but] disturbingly the electricians that arrived were not able to provide the school with any papers that could confirm that they were qualified,” Kruger said.

Gauteng education department spokesperson Steve Mabona said the department was still awaiting a response from “line-function” and would respond to Rekord’s enquiry once it was received.

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