Pretoria West police visit schools to ensure safety on first day
"We noticed in other areas that school principals were attacked by parents on the first day."
Pretoria West police visited six schools in their precinct on Wednesday to ensure smooth running for the first school day of 2022.
Spokesperson, Constable Sibongile Vuma said at the beginning of each school year, police got a national instruction to monitor schools when they reopened.
On Wednesday, police had to be called in to restore calm when parents and education department officials clashed in Ga-Rankuwa.
Disgruntled parents at the local district offices demanded that all their children be placed “otherwise no officials would be allowed to leave”.
The parents were not happy with the online application system which has been adopted by the Gauteng Education department.
Vuma said they also noticed in other areas that school staff were threatened by unhappy parents about placements of their children.
“We were doing a safer school programme where we patrol schools on the first day. This programme will last up to January 21.”
Vuma said school visits were fruitful as the station got to engage with the different principals on how their first days were going and also hear about the previous year’s challenges.
She said they also introduced a programme called Adopt-a-Cop where each school has police officers appointed to work with it directly.
“This means that whatever challenges the school have, they will have direct contact with that officer, unlike the whole process of calling a police station. In some schools, you find that they have a drug problem, drinking alcohol in school, learners who carry dangerous weapons or teenage pregnancies.
“The officer will be the one who brings this to the attention of the station. We will then sit and draw up a plan of how we can raise awareness in that particular school.”
She said the principals were excited about working with the police to fight crime in schools.
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