Harare West MP Majome visits schools after complaints over swimming pools

Harare West MP Jessie Majome has said he started visiting some schools in his constituency after some concerns were raised over the state of swimming polls.

"I started the school year in the constituency by visiting 2 new private schools after a concerned constituent informed me of an unprotected swimming pool at Melbourne School in Tynwald Harare West Constituency. I therefore went to investigate the situation when schools opened this January," Majome said.

"This was my first visit to the school which opened in 2015 is in the heart of Tynwald North Suburb. I got to see the  incomplete swimming pool bordered by a chilling death trap of steel spikes which was not secured by either a fence of the school premises or the pool site area itself and which all the more hazardous because the site is less than 6 meters from houses with no fences themselves and whose residents have open access to a tap at the school."

She said as the Headmaster a Musara was way away she telephoned him to raise her concern and he made an undertaking to put banting and assign a security guard within a week, which is clearly not enough as a physical barrier is vital.

"I urged him to fence off the area or to place a barricade around the pool site crater. Any residents of the area please tell me if he has kept his promise," she said.

"I then went to nearby Acacia Junior School which is another new school and is in Madokero suburb. I was impressed by the arc layout of school. The school has in contrast a well secured swimming pool which is the way to go, and which I was shown by a Mabvutsa the Acting School Headmistress."

Majome said the mushrooming of private schools in Harare West is a symptom of government's failure in running the education system i.e. failing to build a single school in the constituency since the 1970s.

"In Parliament I took the Minister of Education Lazarus Dokora to task on the lack of new government schools to cater to the ballooning population and demanded that he does so. In Harare West, there has been no new school in Post independent Zimbabwe. Now parents who can afford to have to pay a fortune for their children to get education," she said.

"I also paid a courtesy call to the Exodus and Co. office at Madokero. I met the Administration Manager who shared with me the plans for this plush suburb, which once it's completed will have 1700 homes, 198 apartments, 48 Flats, 3 pre schools, 3 primary schools, 2 secondary schools, 5 churches, 2 medical centres and a shopping complex. Unfortunately the residents of this suburb were denied the right to vote in the recent Ward 16 council by elections as no new voter registration was conducted.