BULAWAYO – Seventy-four secondary schools in Harare and Bulawayo have benefited from hand washing stations and an assortment of sanitation oriented kit donated by UKAid under the auspices of the WASH programme, a concerted initiative rolled out last year to augment efforts aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19 and other hygiene related diseases.
The assistance, implemented by GOAL Zimbabwe in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and government, is aimed at boosting schools cleanliness under the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s safe schools initiative.
A list of 37 schools in each of the cities benefitted from hand washing stations, cases of soap, Covid-19 masks, sanitisers, hand liquid soap and t-shirts for school health campaigners within individual learning institutions.
The assistance is being administered by schools through health clubs supervised by school health coordinators who have been receiving some training on how to handle the hygiene based facility.
During a recent media tour to assess the impact of the WASH material in selected schools in Bulawayo, school authorities praised the programme for helping combat the spread of diseases such as Covid-19 and diarrhoea in a city that has battled perennial water supply challenges for years.
Sithokozile Moyo, headmistress for Eveline Girls High School, said the donation of soap and other hand washing implements, coupled with some sanitary ware sourced from elsewhere, has helped bridge the economic gap between students from families of means and those without.
“In this school, we have a lot of these vulnerable children; so the donations are benefiting the vulnerable.
“We have health clubs which help identify those learners so that once every fortnight, atleast they get a bar of soap. So, we would like to thank GOAL Zimbabwe for the donation,” she said.
Montrose Girls High School health coordinator Alice Chiriya said the donation of hygiene based kit has added impetus to the Group A school’s internal initiatives to engender a culture of hygiene among learners.
“The donation has helped us extend the campaign on cleanliness in our classrooms and the community as a whole.
“Learners are now even more conscious that they have to be in a clean environment for their safety in learning,” Chiriya said.
The donation, according to school authorities at Townsend and Mpopoma High Schools where the media made stop overs, meant a lot more for the two learning institutions set apart from the rest after the former was buffeted by a Covid-19 outbreak end of 2020 with authorities at Mpopoma also working their fingers to the bone to maintain hygiene among over 2000 learners.
Townsend experienced a Covid-19 outbreak in which 94 learners and 14 teachers tested positive to the virus towards the end of 2020.
The school also received some buckets and water for washing hands during the Covid-19 menace.
In a bid to echo the messaging towards the cleanliness campaign, the school introduced murals pasted on walls to remind students of the importance of cleanliness.
Mpopoma headmaster Christopher Dube admitted that before the donation of hand washing detergents, administering the Covid-19 protocols among 2,200 was a heavy task.
“I feel this was a heavy task considering that the water flow from the taps is not always there, council closes some of the water,” he said.
Dube said the “Jojo” water tank donated to the school by UNICEF some time back could not service the giant enrolment base with the water running out.
The school has a borehole which often fails to produce enough water when the resource runs out just before the rain season.
Commenting on the establishment of school health clubs, Samson Mabwe, Senior WASH officer with GOAL Zimbabwe, said the concept was a deliberate effort to calibrate the minds of the young learners towards sustainable cleanliness.
“We have been concentrating so much on the software part of it, the school health clubs; if we concentrate on the software part of it, the mind-set is addressed.
“They had to understand why they should have the school hand washing facilities, why the need to have water and sanitation facilities provided at schools and their importance so that when they have that knowledge, they can also assist in the control of wash related diseases,” Mabwe said.
Primary and Secondary Education Ministry Communications and Advocacy Director Taungana Ndoro described the WASH programme as a success.
“The general observation is that the wash programme is working, government, together with its partners, has made fantastic strides in making sure that we provide water, sanitation and hygiene in our schools.
“In Bulawayo, water is a challenge. Having the water and sanitation and hygiene facilities implemented by our development partners goes a long way in making sure that our girl children are confident and they are able to receive the quality education that they should receive,” Ndoro said.
