The Department of Education’s ”relaxed” attitude towards school safety in Mpumalanga is contributing to the escalating rate of crime, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Wednesday.
”Learners and taxpayers in Mpumalanga are suffering as criminals are increasingly targeting schools,” said DA provincial education spokesperson Anthony Benadie in a statement.
”It would also appear that the Department of Education’s relaxed attitude towards school safety … is contributing to the escalating rate of criminal incidents at public schools.”
He said criminals were aware that schools were ”soft” targets, which had little or no form of security measures in place.
During the sitting of the provincial legislature on Tuesday, crime statistics over the past 12 months were read out.
At Mpumalanga schools, there was a reported 365 burglaries, 142 incidents of violence, 116 cases of assault, four sexual assault cases, five drug-related incidents, six cases of arson, and seven dangerous weapons being found.
There was a total of 645 criminal incidents.
Bernadie pointed out that criminal activity over the past year had cost the province about R11 589 per incident.
The replacement of stolen or damaged property cost more than R7-million.
”With this R7 474 600, the Department of Education could have kitted out 1 384 schools with an alarm system of R450 per month for a year.
”Instead, the Department of Education has identified 80 schools across the province [20 from each district] with the most challenging problems and, of these 80 schools, it has installed early warning systems in nine of them,” he said.
In response, the province’s education spokesperson Jasper Zwane told Sapa the department was taking an active approach to the problems regarding school safety.
He said measures had been put in place and the department had established a unit to deal with security at schools.
”We are also ensuring that communities are playing a vital role so that schools become centres for community development.”
He could not elaborate on it.
”While we understand that a lot still needs to be done, it is wrong for the DA to say that the department is taking a relaxed approach,” said Zwane. — Sapa