Our Opinion

Quit dithering

A 12-year-old girl was raped in a forest this week while on her way to school. The attack prompted Captain Jackson Manatha to urge parents to organise transport to take their children to school.

Clearly his motives were noble, but given the school transport crisis, Manatha’s comment would have been laughable were the issue not one in which the lives of our children are at stake.

This week alone:

l A 16-year-old schoolgirl was killed when she was flung from the back of an out-of-control bakkie taking children to school. Five other children were seriously hurt.

l Police arrested the drivers of two buses carrying over 300 children to school – more than double the allowed number certified for the vehicles.

l The very next day traffic authorities in Bizana impounded three more buses overloaded with pupils.

The latest incidents come, we are told, as the provincial Education Department scrambles to find the most suitable mode of transport for pupils, mostly from rural villages around the Eastern Cape.

During an education oversight committee meeting last week it emerged that former Education MEC Mkhangeli Matomela had negotiated with car maker Tata to design a bakkie to ferry pupils to school.

However, MPL Phaki Hobongwana advised new MEC, Johnny Makgato, not to continue talks with Tata, saying earlier negotiations with DaimlerChrysler were at an advanced stage.

Subsequent probing by the Dispatch revealed that the department sought permission from Transport Minister Jeff Radebe to pilot five converted bakkies – but his stance is that using bakkies as passenger vehicles for a fee is illegal.

Into this mix comes the news that plans are afoot by the provincial Transport Department to use horse-drawn carts as one of the solutions to the problem.

There is also talk of a massive roll out of bicycles. Bicycles? Imagine a Grade 1 pupil on an oversized bicycle trying to pedal up an Eastern Cape dirt track. Imagine also, the same Grade 1 trying to retain ownership of that bike.

Why is it that more than two years have passed since the ghastly 2004 Amalinda bakkie accident that claimed six lives – and still nothing tangible is on the table?

Why is it that one hand of government seems not to know what the other is doing, and the issue appears stuck in the bog of inertia that has trapped much of officialdom in our struggling province?

What are they waiting for? Another child to be raped walking to school? A catastrophe the size of a tsunami to shift them out of neutral? Or perhaps, like certain members of the Ndlambe Municipality, gifts?