DA donates shoes to learners at blown away school

Ga-Rakgoatha– DA Limpopo on Tuesday, 05 March donated school shoes to the underprivileged learners at Rakgoatha Primary School in Ga-Rakgoatha village in Zebediela.

According to the party the donation comes after it noticed the predicament of the learners during an oversight inspection after the roof of their school was blown off by a heavy storm about three years ago.

The DA said it was also shocked to notice that the Limpopo Department of Education failed to fix the roof despite several empty promises made by officials assessed the damage.

The party said school had three blocks and one was destroyed by a hail storm. It further said it had since written to Ishmael Kgetjepe, Limpopo Department of Education MEC, and had not received any reply despite claims by departmental spokesperson that they would reply.

The DA said in a statement that more than 50 learners were now forced to share one classroom, which caused unnecessary overcrowding and made it impossible for conducive learning and teaching at the school.

“The overcrowding is against the standard norms of learner to educator ratio which is supposed to be 1 teacher against 40 learners. Furthermore, adequate resources such as textbooks, desks and chairs were also damaged during the storm, which has also contributed towards the shortage of textbooks and chairs at the school,” said the party.

The statement concluded that it was apparent that the department had failed the learners and educators for over three years by not fulfilling its own mandate to provide a conducive environment for learning and teaching, and contravened the learner’s constitutional rights to education as enshrined in the Constitution.

Sam Makondo, Limpopo Department of Education Spokesperson, had not responded to the paper’s query at the time of going to press.