DAILY EXERCISE: Kids have to walk through the bushes to get to school from Section 10 in Komga. Picture: MARK ANDREWS
KOMGA Zone 10 residents complain they have to walk their children to school because the roads are so bad that buses can’t drive on them.
The school is about 5km from their homes by road, but a bush path is about a kilometre.
The parents say the path is dangerous, but motor vehicles simply cannot use the road.
Amathole District Municipality (ADM) manager Chris Magwangqana said infrastructure such as internal roads, water reticulation and sanitation for 342 sites in the area had been installed.
He said ADM was currently finalising the remaining sites in the new area.
The former farmworkers, who now occupy Zone 10, were given the land in 1995 but only moved last year in February after ADM gave them temporary structures.
They were promised their houses would be ready six months after their move but their prefabricated structures are now crumbling.
“We are not only complaining about the houses here but even our kids are suffering,” one parent, Nobonke Tunyara, said.
“Before we moved here they were closer to the school but now they have to walk.”
Tunyara said they were told the municipality had spent R10-million fixing the road and sanitation in the area.
When the Daily Dispatch visited the area last week there was no tarred or gravel road, just a makeshift one.
“Residents made that road using spades – there was no grader. It’s better now because cars can come into the area,” she said.
Tunyara said a pupil transport bus came into the area earlier this year and they were told it would only start operating when the road was tarred.
“We walk the children every morning and in the afternoon we must go back to fetch them because they walk in a bushy area and it’s dangerous,” said Pheliwe Ngema.
Tunyara said parents decided to walk their children to school because of the increase in crime in the area.
“Last year a woman who was on her way home from collecting wood was raped and murdered. We cannot take chances with our children, especially the girls.”
She said every morning unemployed mothers walked their children to school and again in the afternoon they collected them after school.
Magwangqana said ADM had done their part in ensuring that the land was surveyed and the Great Kei Municipality was expected to submit a housing application to the provincial department of human settlement.
