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Obey Sibanda Features Reporter
BUBI District in Matabeleland North Province is undoubtedly endowed with immense natural resources in the form of rich gold deposits. However, it remains one of the least developed areas in the country with very little or nothing done to improve the infrastructure and standard of living of the locals. The vast resources in the region, if exploited by the locals, would go a long way to improve their lives and education systems of their children since the district has a history of recording poor pass rates because of the absence of schools or long distances which children are forced to walk to reach the nearest school.

There is no better example of a school with poor infrastructure in the district than Mdutshane Primary School.

Visiting the school, one is greeted by a sorry state of about 40 pupils crammed in a dilapidated shack, that they call a school. The makeshift school has a few trained teachers, lacks learning materials and ablution facilities.

Inadequate furniture is also one factor compromising the quality of education offered to the pupils. The infrastructure is outdated and there is a danger of walls falling onto the occupants.

Classes at the school are composite or multi-grade; pupils in different grades are grouped together. Early Childhood Development grades A and B are the most jam-packed and this is a major cause for concern considering that this is the most crucial stage in learning. In upper grades the shortage of teaching material and classrooms are intricately interwoven. Coupled with large pupils enrolment, the consequence is overcrowded classrooms hence the poor results. According to a teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity for professional reasons, the school is one of the worst performers in the province. The teacher bemoaned the lack of furniture as one of the contributing factors.

“The condition under which the pupils are learning is pathetic and there is urgent need for a rehabilitation of the school. Pupils bring chairs from home; the furniture comes in all colours, shapes and sizes presenting an ugly sight in the classroom. Many sit on the floor or bricks, stand or squeeze onto desks shared with others making reading, writing, and supervision and monitoring task virtually impossible.

“The situation is really affecting the enrolment of pupils because the parents are complaining about the condition and there is nothing they can do but to withdraw their children from the school,” said the teacher.

According to studies, failure by pupils to access proper learning material such as books and furniture is a gross violation of their right to education. The teacher further said the ugly situation is having adverse effects on the enrolment and retention of pupils in the school.

Since the objective of any educational system is to equip children with literacy and wider skills that they need to realise their full potential and become responsible citizens, the state of affairs at Mdutshane Primary School is the opposite. The poor infrastructure is discouraging children from attending school regularly exacerbated by the absence of clean, safe and separate toilets for boys and girls and this tends to discourage them, particularly girls, from attending school regularly.

Another senior teacher at the school lamented: “The lack of infrastructure is most severe at Mdutshane Primary School as compared to other primary schools in the district. Most children in the school will reach their adolescent years unable to read, write and perform basic numeracy. Despite being enrolled in school, many of them do not seem to be learning much.

“The burden falls most heavily on us teachers who often spend hours collecting wood for cooking and heating as the school is not connected to the electricity grid. Teachers are also forced to walk long distances to fetch water and this affects them as they will be too tired to prepare for lessons. This automatically leads to poor results.”

School Development Association (SDA) chairperson Majaha Nkiwane urged the local business community to assist the school by buying furniture, saying it should be part of their social responsibility programmes or the best way of ploughing back to the community which they were operating from.

“The fact is that mining companies operating from the district are making a lot of money which they are siphoning out and investing to other areas. These companies don’t take any initiative to assist the community which they are operating from by building schools and roads. Despite owning resources in form of gold ore, locals are living in abject poverty and we’re appealing to the government to intervene by making them give back to the community by constructing schools.

“We’ve approached them several times seeking assistance in constructing a new standard school block anticipating a positive response, but all our efforts hit a brick wall. They are not forthcoming citing various reasons, chief among them the cash flow problems. They claim they are not realising any meaningful profit. Isabella Mine, one of the major mines operating in the area, only assisted us with a truck to transport sand from the river. It’s clear that these companies are taking us for granted. If they are not realising anything why are they still operating?” observed Nkiwane.

Village head, Jeff Nyoni, also complained about the lackadaisical attitude of mining companies, saying they were siphoning resources in the area while not developing it.

“These companies promised to invest in infrastructure and education in return for exploiting our resources but they are refusing to honour their pledge. It’s clear that they can only do so after the intervention of the government otherwise we will ban them from operating in our area,” said Nyoni.

He said companies operating from the area were obliged to pay back to the community, as they were occupying most of the land, their fields and grazing areas for cattle leaving the community with very little land for farming activities.

A parent, Bongani Ndlovu, said despite the fact that the companies were making a lot of money, they were stingy when it came to giving back to the community. He also complained about the area’s state of neglect by the mining companies.

“The district had enormous potential for agriculture, but the vast majority of farmers are small land holders after they lost their land to miners who are not developing the area. For example we don’t have money to fund the construction of the school as we are also struggling to pay school fees for our children and salaries of Early Childhood Development (ECD) teachers. We expect the miners to chip in, build schools, clinics and roads like what other mining companies are doing in areas which they’re operating from,” said Ndlovu

Bubi legislator Cde Clifford Sibanda said work was in progress to make sure that the community benefited from their resources.

“Mdutshane Primary School is not the only affected school as there’re so many dilapidated schools in the district. We have formed a Community Share Ownership Trust Scheme as a way of ensuring that locals benefit from their resources. The scheme will see the upgrading of roads, schools and rehabilitation of roads. Mdutshane primary school is one of the beneficiaries. It is our wish that we build more schools closer in the mining communities,” said Sibanda. Even the children of the mine workers are also affected by lack of schools. Those attending secondary schools have to travel about 10-15 kilometres everyday to the nearest school.

Deputy Minister of Primary and Secondary Education Professor Paul Mavhima expressed concern over the learning environment and lack of schools in the country.

“We did a mapping and found out that we need about 2,000 new schools in the country and this is largely because we now have new resettlement areas. Children in some parts of the country travel long distances to school,” he said.