Editorial Comment: Address plight of Chingwizi pupils

zimpEducation is one of the basic human rights that must be enjoyed by every Zimbabwean child. The government therefore has an obligation to ensure that each and every Zimbabwean child enjoys this inalienable right. The settler regime had put in place a bottleneck system for the blacks’ education so that very few could go beyond high school.

The screening started at primary school level where many pupils failed to proceed to secondary school because of the rigorous screening.

At From Two the pupils were subjected to another screening and this was again done at Form Four and Six, resulting in very few pupils proceeding to institutions of higher learning such as colleges and the only university available then.

This was a deliberate policy by the colonial government to deny blacks education so that they continued to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. It was because of the skewed education policy that government at independence immediately embarked on a programme to build schools in both the rural and urban areas while also increasing the number of colleges and universities.

The government policy is that children in both urban and rural areas must be within walking distance to the nearest primary or secondary school. The country which had just one university at independence now boasts of seven State universities. The policy is for each province to have at least a state university and plans are therefore at an advanced stage to establish state universities in the remaining three provinces.

The government and its development partners have during the past 34 years built a number of both primary and secondary schools in rural and urban areas so that pupils are within walking distance of the nearest school. The situation is however different in resettlement areas where pupils are walking long distances to the nearest school and in some areas are accommodated in makeshift buildings such as farmhouses.

It is in these new resettlement areas that government should direct more resources so that pupils in these areas are not denied the right to education. At the weekend we carried a story of an increasing number of pupils from Chingwizi Resettlement area in Mwenezi, Masvingo, who are dropping out of schools because of the long distances they are travelling to attend both primary and secondary school.

According to the resettled families, children are walking between 15 and 20km to get to school and this has forced many of them to drop out. More than  100 pupils have since dropped out of school because they cannot walk the long distances. The families settled in Chingwizi were displaced by the Tokwe-Murkosi Dam.

We want to call on the government to immediately address the plight of Chingwizi school pupils so that they are within walking distance of the nearest school. The government has over the years been complemented by development partners such as councils, churches and other non-governmental organisations in building schools and we want to appeal to these development partners to assist in building schools in Chingwizi.

Chingwizi families should not feel cursed by being moved to the new area to pave way for the construction of the dam which is meant to improve lives for many people in Masvingo and the country at large.

 

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