While millions of children returned to school in coastal provinces on Wednesday, some displaced families’ children in KwaZulu-Natal are still awaiting confirmation of which schools they will attend.
The KZN provincial government says efforts are underway to place learners in schools after several families lost their homes during last year’s floods in Durban.
Families from Ntuzuma and Lindelani, in northern Durban, joined flood victims from across the metro when they were moved to flats in Reservoir Hills on Christmas Eve.
These children are pleading with the government to enroll them as soon as possible.
“My results weren’t that good, so if I miss out on this year I don’t know what I’ll do. Because I need to learn so that I can find a job in the future and I can improve my grades,” says one of the children.
“It’s not such a good thing that we should stay here while other learners are learning at school. So I would like to say that if there must be any help, please help us so that we can also go back to school and learn like other learners fix child cry,” says another child.
KwaZulu-Natal Premier, Nomusa Dube-Ncube says the process to enroll flood-displaced learners in new schools started three weeks ago.
She says the provincial government will offer transport if the available schools are far away from where the learners and their families were relocated to in December.
“In fact this is what we did last year already because we couldn’t find new schools. We transported all the learners. Using also our fleet of vehicles from the government, our cars. Where we couldn’t get our cars we even had Lotto, Maritzburg and other schools, they helped us and we’re putting fuel in the cars so that learners can be transported back and forwards. So that’s the plan at the moment,” says Nomusa Dube-Ncube.
Video: School placement struggle for children for KZN flood victims
