Riled students shut down school, demanding teachers and electricity
Sukuma Secondary School in KwaZulu-Natal has reached boiling point as students brought the school to a grinding halt. Pupils are furious after a shortage of teachers and electricity has left the school crippled.
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Monday saw students from the Pietermaritzburg school barricading roads with broken bottles. The pupils claim that there has been no electricity at the school since the beginning of the second term last week.
Added to this, there are no teachers for math literacy and physics since the start of the year, according to The Citizen.
Vehicles had been forced to avoid the area, with learners throwing bottles into the road. Teachers had been prevented from leaving and rubbish had been set ablaze in front of the school gates.
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A Grade 11 pupil explained that the school has not giving them any answers over the issue with electricity, saying that the students did not believe the principal's excuse that there had been an issue with a transformer:
" We have seen Eskom cars passing by the school. They would have fixed it if the problem is the transformer… We can’t photocopy. That service is now paid for at internet cafes. We can’t function properly without electricity.”
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The learner says that classmates who stay at the hostel have been told to stay home until the issue have been resolved. They are falling more and more behind with their studies.
The pupils, fearful of the impact the poor service delivery will have on their grades, have vowed to continue protesting until teachers are supplied.
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Muzi Mahlambi, spokesperson for the Department of Education in KZN, said that the department will be intervening in the matter before Friday as they couldn't afford to have students missing classes.
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Source: Briefly News
