BY OBAKENG MAJE

The North West Education and Sport Development, MEC Maphefo Matsemela came to the rescue of the Matloding community after learners have been away from school for a period of 35 days.

This peaceful resolution follows a series of meetings held between the officials of the department and the community which failed to yield positive results.

Since May 2015, the Matloding community embarked on a massive strike to demand a High school in their area. They prevented learners from going to school, burned local clinic, barricaded all roads within the village and destroyed a number of public properties in their area.

They complained about their children whom they alleged were ill-treated and beaten by other learners at Marumuloa Middle School and Mothibinyane Secondary School in Tshidilamolomo Village, which is 12 kilometres away from their area.

MEC Matsemela met with the community at a packed community hall of Matloding, which was attended by hundreds of people from the area. Tension was written on the wall when the meeting started and all speakers from the community spoke in one language to say,” We are very concerned about our children who are sitting at home and not attending school. We want the department to help us in taking them back to school in Logageng Village not in Tshidilamolomo”.

In responding to the concerns of the community MEC Matsemela assured them that, this is a government which listens to the people and surely it will assist them.

“As of tomorrow we are going to take learners to Logageng according to the demands made by parents. We are also going to establish a task team, which will come up with a permanent solution to the problem. The task team should report back to the community in October about progress registered. The department will in the meantime implement the recovery plan so that the learners can catch up for the lost time in class”, said MEC Matsemela.

The community agreed to release children tomorrow to go back to school and thanked the department for listening to their concerns. MEC Matsemela closed the meeting by requesting the community to join her in removing stones and trees used to blockade the roads.

-TDN

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BY OBAKENG MAJE
The North West Education and Sport Development Department celebrated the Youth Month by empowering the Grade 9, 10 and 11 Representative Council Leaders on becoming a responsible leader through an intensive summit held on Saturday, 25 July 2015 at Vryburg.

Non-negotiables for learners were at centre stage which highlighted that learners should be in class at all times and that they must use all the available support materials provided such as textbooks.

North West Education and Sport Development spokesperson Elias Malindi said “The key objectives of the summit were to provide leaders of learners a platform to raise challenges they face in their different schools, to have clear implementable resolutions which are SMART(Simple Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time bound) and get learners in the province to commit to a vision of turning our schools into crime and violence free institutions.”

Malindi said the department in empowering the student leadership went out of its way to organise experts from different fields and several resolutions were adopted which included: To focus on increasing basic safety conditions in schools, decreasing incidents of violence and crime through  prevention, intervention support and advocacy.

“A need to empower RCL’s as an important channel of liaison between teachers, learners, parents, community and organisations was also recognised at the summit,” he said.

Commitments made by the RCL’s  are to promote schools as smoke free zones, making schools drug and weapon free and ensuring crime and violent incidents do not go unreported.

He said the key challenges facing learners noted at the summit were corporal punishment, bullying, food security, teenage pregnancies and road accidents whilst travelling to areas of learning.

Amongst the dignitaries who motivated the learners was billionare Thapelo Tshepe who hails from Bethanie Village in the North West. He became a millionaire at age of 21 and he told learners that your background does not determine your destiny, it is possible to achieve anything if you are determined.

The summit saw key partnerships being formed between the Department of Education and Sports Development, SAPS, Office of the Premier, municipalities, NPA, Lovelife and the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.

“It was agreed that the RCL committee will hold briefing meeting with all the other learners to inform them about the resolutions as a way of cascading information to all the learners in the province,” concludes Malindi.

-TDN

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