A tragedy occurred on 1 February 2019, when a bridge collapsed, killing learners at Hoërskool Driehoek, while injuring others. Following the incident the department of infrastructure and development said that it would focus its attention on schools faced with issues relating to structural safety, such as Roodepoort Hoërskool.
According to Adv Anton Alberts, the Freedom Front Plus’ national spokesperson and member of the provincial legislature in Gauteng, it would seem as though the department has failed in its role to provide critical oversight over structural safety at schools as a result of what he described as the ANC’s norm of flawed inspections.
Last week during a meeting of the legislature’s committee for education the Freedom Front Plus submitted questions regarding an apparent lack of structural safety inspections to Gauteng’s department of education.
According to Alberts the department was unsure about certain aspects and agreed to provide feedback at a later stage.
“The Freedom Front considers the situation as alarming and we therefore decided to submit more written questions to the department of education to determine if inspections are being conducted as often as they should,” said Alberts.
“In terms of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (85 van 1993) inspections are required to be conducted every six months within the first two years of the life cycle of any infrastructure and after that on an annual basis.
“The tradgedy at Hoërskool Driehoek showed that this did not happen. According to the parliamentary answer provided by the minister of basic education to a question by the VF Plus on 15 February 2019 the last inspection at the school took place on 8 April 2014.
“The only further inspection was done in July 2018 to determine the size of the school proportionate to the number of learners.
“This is usually done to drive the political ideology of the department to put pressure on Afrikaans schools which are not full to accommodate learners who speak other languages, which lead to the effective transformation of Afrikaans schools to English scools. It is clear that ideological goals are much more of a priority to the department than the safety of learners,” Alberts said in a statement.
The Freedom front plus said it would reveal the answers to questions submitted to the department of education once it has been received.
In conclusion Alberts said that the tragedy of Hoërskool Driehoek must never repeat itself.
