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Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
300
000 children drop out of schools in crackdown
ZimOnline
June 18, 2005
http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=9947
HARARE - More
than 300 000 children of informal traders and city squatter families
in Zimbabwe have dropped out of school in the last four weeks alone
after their homes were destroyed by the government, ZimOnline has
learnt.
Officials at
the Ministry of Education head office in Harare said directors of
education in the country’s 10 provinces were last week asked to
compile figures of children under 13 years no longer coming to school
because their families were evicted in the government’s highly unpopular
urban clean-up operation.
"The average
figure of pupils no longer attending school because their family
has been evicted is 100 per school and these are just primary school
kids. But in secondary schools, it appears the effect of the evictions
has not been that devastating," said one senior official, who
spoke anonymously for fear of victimisation.
The official
said school authorities have not been able to establish the whereabouts
of the children many of whom are now just roaming around urban areas
with their families and sleeping in the open after the shanty homes
were brunt down by the police.
"It is not known
whether these children will come back to school once things stabilise
or they are out for good. What is clear is that they have been forced
out of school because of the prevailing circumstances," said the
official.
Education Minister
Aeneas Chigwedere yesterday acknowledged that school children who
lived in squatter homes had been forced to drop out of school. But
he said his ministry was only going to act on the matter after fully
assessing the problem.
Chigwedere said:
"We are still assessing the situation. Any reactive measures will
be taken thereafter." He did not say when exactly he plans to take
the ‘reactive measures’.
More than 22
000 informal traders have been arrested mostly for selling goods
without licence while close to a million families have been left
without shelter after armed soldiers and police razed down their
shanty homes in an operation the government says is necessary to
restore the beauty of urban areas, law and order.
The United Nations,
European Union, United States, Amnesty International, local churches
and human rights groups have all condemned the operation as insensitive
and a gross violation of poor people’s human rights.
Zimbabwe’s main
opposition Movement for Democratic Change party has accused the
government of unleashing the campaign in urban and peri-urban areas
to punish residents there for rejecting it in last March’s controversial
parliamentary election. The government, which says it will now extend
the clean-up operation to former white farms against illegal settlers,
denies it is being motivated by politics.
Commenting on
the massive drop out of children from school, one retired educationist
William Mupita said it was the first time since Zimbabwe’s 1970s
independence war that such large numbers of children are quitting
school within a month.
"This is probably
the first time since the days of the liberation war that such a
high number of children drop out of school in such a short period
of time. These figures should alarm anyone serious about this country's
human development," said Mupita, who worked in the education sector
for over 40 years.
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