remier Mabuza delivers a school for Piet Retief farm children

 Premier David Mabuza unveils the New School in Piet Retief

Premier Mabuza interact with pupils

 

remier Mabuza delivers a school for Piet Retief farm children

By BRIAN KAJENGO

The lives of the learners from nine different Piet Retief farm schools will never be the same after Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza delivered for them a R189 million state of the art boarding school on Monday 24 February 2014.

The learners from Broadholm, Idalia, Nongena, Samlee, Thokomala, Westoe, Zandspruit, Rivebend and Lithole primary schools will all be absorbed and move to their new home called Izimbali Combined School in Amsterdam, about 35km north of Piet Retief.

The school is also a maths, science and technology academy. The School has boarding facility for the children living in the farming communities came after Premier Mabuza undertook a visit to the farm schools around Mkhondo Municipality with members of executive for education and public works respectively.

Premier Mabuza interacted with the farm communities and the Premier has concern with the accommodation system. Mabuza pleads with parents to give support to go to school.

“I was so touched in such a way that I had to compare their structures to any Hoerskool, definitely those children were doomed to fail before they could even start going to school. I called all the parents and told them that I would take all their children and put them in a boarding school. They all complained saying who will look after their cattle, and that that will help them in their households,” explained Mabuza.

According to Mabuza, this school helps both pupils, and educators that were walking long distant to the school. They are no more over clouding in one class.

“I asked the MEC if she counted these structures as schools because they lacked the infrastructure and the environment was correctly not for education,” said Mabuza.

Premier says the new boarding facility accommodate will relieve burden from parents as their children will no longer have to sleep on empty stomach.

“Lack classrooms, lack of learning material and walking the long distances will now be thing of the past for the learners. For the first time in their lives, they will now have access to hot shower water daily; they will now get to be taught inside a science and computer laboratory, they will now even be able to create time for going to the library to enrich their knowledge. The laundry facility at the new school will also relieve them from stress and will make it easy for them to concentrate on learning while doing other things such as playing soccer, netball and cricket on fine grass as the school boasts with these amenities.” Premier David Mabuza said.

The construction of this boarding school began towards the end of 2012 and boasts with 21 classrooms, science laboratory, library, computer centre, 40 toilets, and an administration block. The school completed in accordance to the scope of work and is ready for occupation.

He said, “The appointment of hostel staff is at an advance stage. The classes are furnished and they include Grade R. There are four sets of the dormitories for boys and another four sets for girls. The premises are nicely fenced and there is water and electricity.”

 A new uniform donated, all the learners from the nine schools will only move in, in the next term in April. The teachers will also be absorbed.

“This venue is a like a small heaven. No one can complain I have given everyone in this community everything; even the teachers will have tea here. We are doing this because we want to stress that there is no child that deprived of education because we want them to look after the cattle. These children have their own future.

“The ball is in their court. I am aware that the parents are faced with poverty, but I want to say, when well looked after these children will change this environment their parents are living in,” said Mabuza.

The Premier stressed that he wanted the boarding school looked after, the dormitories should be clean at all times, grass should be nicely cut, walls painted and anything broken fixed.

“You are getting a big school, what a blessing. I want you to know that I am associated with good achievers, please do not disappoint us. This is your school, look after it for years to come. You will use it to educate your children in future. This is but one of our good stories to tell as this provincial government. It is only those who do not want to see who will say there is no good story,” said Mabuza.