Africa-Press – Mozambique. The education authorities have suspended lessons at the Chongoanine Primary School, in Chongoene district, southern Mozambican province of Gaza, after a major fire that broke out in the early hours of Tuesday destroyed the main secretariat, which housed administrative and educational materials.
According to the school director, Rosílio Marcos, the cause of the fire is so far unknown but it is suspected that students performing poorly may have caused the arson in order to destroy documents responsible for their school records.
“The fire destroyed 500 educational materials, including schedules, textbooks and computers. We suspended classes because we are not in any condition to work. Over two thousand students are at home”, he said. “We are demanding a serious and swift investigation into the case.”
The arson, he said, will compromise the enrolment of pupils for next year and well as the final exams, since “the fire destroyed 30 years of administrative and pedagogical records.”
“Right now, we have nothing. Everything was reduced to ashes. We have no agenda, no case files for either students or teachers. We don’t even have chairs, we have almost nothing. The school will have to be restarted, it must be restarted. And the exam period is approaching. We will have exams for the sixth and ninth grades. We don’t know how we’ll manage them”, Marcos said.
According to local sources, cited by the independent daily “O país”, the fire started around 23.00, “and we believe that the fire wasn’t caused by a short circuit. The school was burned down. Screams around midnight woke us up and we immediately tried to put out the fire with our own resources, but in vain”, said Marcos.
A source said that arson is suspected, given the community’s history of resistance to paying additional fees for school security, as well as some students’ anger over poor academic performance. As the Education Ministry has repeatedly stressed, parents cannot be obliged to pay for school security guards. Such payments are supposed to be voluntary.
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