Times Of Swaziland: MEETING FOR FINAL DECISION  ON SCHOOLS REOPENING TODAY

MEETING FOR FINAL DECISION  ON SCHOOLS REOPENING TODAY
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BY THOKOZANI MAMBA on 11/11/2021 08:47:00


SITEKI – The final decision on the reopening of schools will be taken today.
A proposal on the table is that schools should reopen next Tuesday. The
ministry, together with SNAT, Eswatini Principals Association (EPA) and the
country’s four regional education officers (REOs), will this morning hold a
meeting in which a final decision will be made regarding the contentious issue
of schools reopening. SNAT Secretary General (SG) Sikelela Dlamini said
government should first address the issues raised by pupils before reopening
schools. Dlamini said a majority of schools had not yet received the free
primary education (FPE) and orphaned and vulnerable children’s (OVCs) grants.
The SG also stated that government had also not employed teachers as per their
recommendation.
Critical
He said it would be inappropriate to reopen schools before addressing the
critical issues first as they would make the situation unworkable in schools.
“It is true, we are meeting tomorrow (today) to come up with the final
decision on the reopening of schools next week. However, government has not yet
addressed some of the things that were recommended, which makes it impossible to
resume lessons,” he said. Welcome Mhlanga, President of EPA, said today’s
meeting would be fundamental towards giving a real picture if government was
ready to reopen schools after having given stakeholders feedback on a number of
issues raised in their previous meeting.
Mhlanga said today’s meeting would be a follow-up to what had been discussed
in previously held meetings. The EPA president said government should be able to
address the meeting on what it had done to address the issues that were raised
by  stakeholders. He said it was an important meeting that would shed light on
the proposed date of reopening of schools.
Vital
“We raised a number of issues among them being the payment of FPE, just to
mention a few. We will know tomorrow how far government has gone in addressing
them. That will be vital to give us a clear picture if government is ready or
not,” he said. The ministry’s Principal Secretary (PS), Bheki Gama, said
today’s meeting would benchmark the final deliberations and map a way forward
on the proposed date of schools reopening. The PS said they would only focus on
educational matters raised by the stakeholders. “The meeting will only focus
on educational matters and won’t be discussing politics as that is not within
our jurisdiction as a ministry. We will have a definite answer tomorrow on the
reopening of schools,” he said. Meanwhile, government closed schools after
pupils started rioting and burning furniture and vandalising classrooms.