NO MORE VENDORS AT SCHOOL GATES

MANZINI – No vendors will be allowed to sell their wares at school gates.

This was said by the Minister of Education and Training, Lady Mabuza. She said this was one of the means that would be employed to protect pupils from contracting the coronavirus upon the reopening of schools as of Monday. Mabuza said this drastic step was taken because items sold by vendors were touched by many people and it would be hard to sanitise them.
“No one will be allowed to sell at the school gates. If we can allow that, we’d be playing a risky game,” the minister said. She said there was a need to be more conscious and practical when dealing with the virus as it had brought a new normal. This was also previously said by the Manzini Regional Education Officcer (REO), Nhlanhla Dlamini.

While touring St Michael’s High School, Dlamini noted the need to suspend the selling of wares by vendors at school gates. He said it was a request that had been forwarded to the minister given the challenges posed by COVID-19.The concerns that were raised were that it was not known where the vendors prepared their food items and also the probability of the goods being exposed to the virus was quite high. The concern came to the fore when the Manzini Regional Administrator, Chief Gija, had questioned the head teacher if there were vendors at the school. The Head teacher, Nokuthula Simelane, responded to the affirmative and said they (vendors) sold their goods outside the school yard.

Sensitive

She said the school had not made a pronouncement on what would happen given that it was a sensitive issue and the vendors were earning a living as well. It was then that Dlamini said his office had sought the intervention of the minister in dealing with the challenge. Meanwhile, this is happening when the country has faced a number of challenges in offering relief to the citizenry. A number of chiefdom councilors (bucopho) have been attacked by their constituents as the statistics of those affected by the pandemic and are in need of food assistance, escalate on a daily basis. Currently, the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) offers E700 cash-based transfers to people hard hit by COVID-19 effects.

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