NED Donkey cart Project Succeeds
Pini Bothoko | Monday November 28, 2016 16:36
It has been a year now since the then Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD) now the Ministry of Basic Education introduced this project under the supervision of the North East District Council (NEDC) as a pilot project.
At a full council meeting tlast week, NED council chairperson Florah Mpetsane announced that the pilot project succeeded with zero accidents recorded hence the project will be rolled out to other areas in the district. She said next year when the schools reopen they would have bought 12 more donkey carts to be used to transport pupils every morning to school and afterwards.
Mpetsane said: “You will concur with me that many children in the NED, on average travel about 20km return journey to and from school on foot. Our children are forced to get up early in the morning to prepare for a long walk to school.
The majority of them walk to school without breakfast, arriving at the school hungry and exhausted”. She stated that this scenario negatively affects pupils’ performance, fuels school dropout rate and defeats the government’s endeavour to make education accessible to all. The council chairperson said as a way of addressing this challenge, the council has been given P300,000 by the government in conjunction with Orange Botswana to procure 12 donkey carts.
She said 12 local artisans were engaged to construct the donkey carts for Lephaneng, Dipolase, Sekonje, Sekukwe and Pobepobe. Mpetsane stated that to-date, only 10 carts have been completed and the remaining two are expected to be completed by the end of this month.
“I therefore hope that all carts will be in operation when schools resume in January 2017,” said Mpetsane. She disclosed that they are very much concerned with high cases of school dropouts in the rural areas. She added that travelling long distances had children arriving late at school and hence unable to concentrate in class.
Mpetsane said many children have dropped out of school in the past due to walking long distances to and from school. When the project was introduced Mpetsane told The Monitor that the donkey cart is designed in a special way to accommodate young pupils.
She said that donkey cart has protective steel iron to protect them from accidental falls together with a tent to cover in case of rains. Asked about possible risks associated with transportation of school children in a donkey cart, Mpetsane stated that these are rural community children who are used to donkey carts.
She said community members are invited to tender for three months for their donkeys to be used to transport pupils, calling on those with donkeys to take advantage of the exercise. “The individual who has won the tender is the one who is responsible for the safety of transporting the children. They are being paid through Ipelegeng fund,” said Mpetsane.