Pupils miss classes due to lack of water after CoJ slaps school with R131 000 bill

Hundreds of pupils at Bosmont Primary School have been forced to stay home and fall behind in their studies due to a prolonged water outage on the premises.

This as the school and the City of Joburg point fingers at each other over an alleged R1.9 million debt.

The water supply crisis has persisted since the second term and has sparked outrage among parents and prompted urgent calls for action.

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Bill skyrockets

According to the school governing body (SGB), city officials removed the water meter outside the school after accusing the school of not paying its bill.

The SGB claims the school is now facing a R1.9 million debt that’s owed to the city. Initially, the amount was over R131 000, but the SGB alleges it has skyrocketed.

Dane Cooke, deputy chair of the SGB, questioned the city’s billing system, saying he believed the figures given by the city were ridiculous.

“This issue is not new. It started when the department said the school needed to handle its own billing.

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“Initially, the principal was handed a R131 000 bill and the city demanded R3 000 in monthly payments. We said we wouldn’t have money to cover that. Now the city is demanding roughly R10 000 a month.

“Where do they expect us to get the money when only a few of the [pupils] pay the fees?” asked Cooke.

He also questioned how the bill had skyrocketed, explaining that the school was hit with a R114 000 fine for an alleged violation involving an illegally connected meter.

“They took the meter again, but when was the investigation done? This has caused a major mess. Nobody informed the principal or staff about the investigation.

“How can we run a school without water? It’s unhealthy for [pupils and teachers]. Basic facilities like bathrooms need water and access to clean facilities, while attempts to have parents send water with their children are unsuccessful as it is insufficient and inconsistent,” he said.

A teacher expressed concern about the potential long-term effects a lack of water could have on the children’s education and well-being.

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“Last week, we tried to run the school by having the kids here until 12pm, but that did not work. We had to call the parents to fetch their kids at 9am, children are losing out on work,” he said.

“They wrote their June exams during this crisis, rushing through their papers. In some extreme cases, they had only 30 minutes to write because they had to go home due to the lack of water. This has impacted the [pupils].

“With Covid, we lost a lot of time and now our [pupils] are again losing out on their curriculum and education,” he added.

The school has Grade R to Grade 7 classes and a total of 726 pupils. One parent, Mpiloliso Mhlanga, who has a child in Grade 5 said: “We want to know how this happened because there should have been proof if payments were made.

“We suspect something is being hidden by the school or the department because we can’t explain why this facility is the only one cut off when it is surrounded by six other schools.”