Teachers living in squalor

NIGEL HIGH: PAYING R3 000 MONTHLY RENT, BUT THERE'S NO WATER, ELECTRICITY OR TOILETS

- Hein Kaiser

Half a dozen schoolteachers are living without electricity, water and sanitation in an abandoned boarding school facility at Nigel High School in the far East Rand. They have been paying rent to the school to sleep in the dilapidated building for years. This, after the hostel was shut down by government post-pandemic due to a lack of funding.

A teacher, who lives in the abandoned building and did not want to be named, said he and his colleagues rely on school neighbours to access services.

"We survive on the kindness of people close by," said the teacher. "We occasionally wire electricity from them and when the school is shut, buckets of water."

To ablute, the teachers must walk to the school, splash with some water instead of a shower, and use the loo. But that only works during school hours, when toilets are unlocked.

For this, they pay R3 000 a month in rent to the school. Purportedly in cash, according to a source.

Inside, the Nigel High School boarding house looks like it could have been a decent place to stay, years ago. Now, old, filthy mattresses, linen and skeletons of steel-framed beds litter many of the rooms. Pieces of ceiling are missing, shattered windows, bust concrete garden furniture and a collection of weeds on the outside.

Drying laundry lines a passage. A portion of the boarding house is locked off with heavy security gates. On the other side of it, there used to be an industrial-sized and fully equipped kitchen.

"It's empty now, it's all been stolen," said the teacher.

Mike Waters, DA spokesperson in Gauteng, said that he was shocked.

"How could the principal or the department of basic education justify having teachers pay rent to live in appalling conditions like this? How can they teach children adequately when they must prepare lessons in the dark and cannot ablute properly?" he said.