Disaster preparedness and education system in Botswana; time to act is now
Correspondent | Thursday November 24, 2016 17:08
The extract is therefore intended to alert the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) and Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) on the fact that disaster strikes are evident in the education system but with little if not nothing in place for disaster preparedness; The Institute of Health Sciences (IHS) - Molepolole was used as a yardstick. MoHW has been included as IHSs fall under this Ministry.
A disaster is an evident that disrupts the normal functioning of processes and causes destruction to structures, property and loss of lives. Common disasters in the education system in Botswana as documented and experienced include; floods, strong winds that blow off roof tops and destroy electric cables, fires, students’ riots, students’ deaths arising from road traffic accidents. Below are instances to qualify the above;
Hunyepa (2015) cited a number of deaths resulting from open trucks that overturned while transporting students as follows; in 1995, nine students and one teacher from Gosemama Junior Secondary School (JSS) and two students from Setlalekgosi JSS, in 2003, five students of Kedia Primary School, in 2005, two students from Shakawe Secondary School. In 2015 Matsha College lost seven students. Hunyepa also observed that open truck transport exposed users to bad weather and leave survivors with physical and psychological scars. According to Hunyepa, this means of transport was long forbidden following several anti-open truck campaigns in the late 1990s and early 2000 by the Botswana Federation of Secondary School Teachers (BOFESETE).
Most public schools are responding positively to this instruction, they have resorted to using government buses though inadequate. The challenge has been that mini buses do not have trailers or any space for luggage, and as such passengers, their luggage and spare wheels, jugs and 20 litter water bottles are transported inside the mini bus. Every year floods that destroy property, food items and kill livestock are reported in Botswana. Tlale (2016) acknowledged that due to heavy rains, Sojwe and Otse Primary School pupils were sent home because schools turned into streams.
It has been nine months and restoration of the damage caused by the storm and estimated at a cost of P802,503.00 has not started at IHS-Molepolole (IHS - Molepolole, Disaster Committee records). The rainy season has started and more loss is expected. The government attributes the delay to the country’s economy deceleration which was even experienced in the second quarter of 2016 (Focus Economics 2016).
The World Bank (2015) featured that new schools are constructed without taking safety into account. In Botswana, Mputhe JSS in Letlhakeng village was abandoned and it is alleged the school was built on poor grounds. At IHS - Molepolole, there are incidences when student rooms caught fire, the worst case was when fire alarms were not triggered while the room the student was sleeping in went on fire, the fire was identified by cleaners who were in the vicinity at the time.
IHS Molepolole does not have a risk office; the school has no trained officer on disasters and disaster preparedness. Experience with IHS is that the MoHW has tried to provide some fire gadgets, however, there is no expertise on use of these and some are not monitored or serviced as required. IHS - Molepolole was opened four years ago but its first reports on fire preparedness were only written in August 2016 by the company which was engaged in servicing fire extinguishers and there after an assessment made by fire brigade whose report has not warranted occupancy of the premises (IHS -Molepolole, Disaster Committee Records).
Burning of property in Public Secondary Schools used to be fashionable.
Of late secondary school students’ riots are a common practice. Kolantsho (2011) documented Swaneng Hill was closed indefinitely when students rioted because teachers had gone on strike, in 2013 Gabz FM reported Ledumang Secondary students rioted after severe beating of a student by a group of teachers. In 2014 Goodhope Senior students rioted (Lekula 2014) and in June 2016 Kgari Sechele Senior Secondary students’ riots left property destroyed, following the teacher disciplining a student who was wondering outside while fellow students were writing an examination. (About Botswana Youth Magazine 2016)
It is in view of this background therefore, that the article questions if safety in the schools is exercised, if the authorities conform to the provisions as laid down in the National Disaster Risk Management Plan 2009 of ensuring that health and safety regulations are developed and conformed with, ensuring promptness when dealing with safety in schools and if the academia has included Disaster Risk Management in school curriculum from primary, secondary and tertiary education.
The paper is geared towards notifying the two ministries to realise the need to embrace safety in education, to treat disaster preparedness as a priority so as to ready the schools for common disasters. The magnitude of common disasters may be currently less but the tables may turn in the very near future.
Ministries could start small in disaster preparedness efforts. Strategies that could be adopted are as follows and the first four are already in place at IHS Molepolole; forming disaster committee, developing vulnerability assessment and resource mapping, drawing disaster plans and procedures, training employees on disaster preparedness, conducting disaster drills, including disaster education in school curricular at different levels. The list is not exhaustive.
Disaster preparedness is a tool to mitigate disasters and therefore every institution in Botswana should be proactive in this matter so as to reduce risk and decrease cost.
*Dorcas Basetsana Maripe-Perera is a nurse educator at Institute of Health Sciences – Molepolole and a PHD student at Atlantic International University