At the end of last year my grandsons special needs school were informed by the Department of Education they were moving to a new school that had become available. The private school near by has multiple buildings and they were only using the primary school for the seniors and juniors. I know this school fairly well as my daughter attended this same high school.
Last week which was back to school week on Wednesday and the parents were informed there was a few days delay as there was no electricity. The delay was expected to take a few days with the school starting the following Monday which is tomorrow. The electricity issue was a half truth and will not be resolved so the school they had been promised is no longer.
The school buildings are perfect with the exception the electricity supply cannot be guaranteed due to cable theft. Since December last year the cables for this particular area have been stolen 3 times already and apparently this is very common here. Now we know why the High school merged with the Primary school and offered their school buildings to another school.
The problem is my grandson's old school was sold by the Department of Education to developers and they have already started demolishing the old school buildings. You would have thought someone would have done their homework first as to the reason why this school became available in the first place before presuming everything was Kosher and happy days.
This particular area used to be an upmarket wealthy area and has been taken over by foreigners in the last 20 years and let us say the area has seen better days. It is not surprising that theft in the area is a major problem yet no one is tackling the problem. I was looking up how bad the electricity is in the area and cable theft is the biggest problem with most properties experiencing outages twice per month to cable theft. This is more than a problem and I am actually quite happy my grandson is not going to school in this area.
Next week I doubt if he will have any school and only expect him to be in school mid February. There are two other options on the table in a far better area and will mean I have to drive an extra 10 minutes each day when collecting him. I was listening in to the live stream the other night and parents can be so ungrateful with them asking for subsidized school fees due to the extra travelling time that we all now face. You cannot please everyone and they should be thinking more about what is best for their child than themselves.
My grandson knows there is a problem and is more than happy to hang out with me whilst waiting for school to re open. Luckily he is one of those kids who is smart and actually enjoys school so waiting possibly another month is not ideal. I am just being realistic on time lines and not getting caught up in the others saying next week or the week after when they weren't even aware of the problem they had.
Just to add to this post to give you an idea of how big a problem this cable theft is in South Africa here are some figures. Over a 3 year period the railways lost 4 600 kilometers of cable. The theft value annually is roughly 1% of SA's total GDP. Cable theft is on the increase and saw an 8 x increase over the last 5 years which is affecting the economy as business struggle to continue as normal. There is a 30 year maximum prison sentence for cable theft and is having no effect and the country needs the death penalty reinstated to curb this problem. When unemployment is so high and increasing syndicates are stripping the infrastructure bare.