The school caretaker who allegedly raped a Grade 2 pupil was hired before new vetting measures was introduced.
|||The school caretaker who allegedly raped a Grade 2 pupil at an Mfuleni school was appointed before new vetting measures for the appointment of school support staff was introduced.
On Monday the Cape Argus reported that a 56-year-old man had been arrested in Mfuleni last week on charges of rape.
The pupil’s mother said her daughter’s friend had told her of two separate occasions on which the man had allegedly raped her daughter in a classroom at the school.
Bronagh Casey, spokeswoman for Education MEC Donald Grant, said the caretaker had been appointed in August 2010. He was a Western Cape Education Department (WCED) employee.
“The WCED has recently introduced stricter measures for the appointment of school support staff such as school foremen.”
Casey said the recruitment process to obtain a nomination for the filling of support staff posts, on contract, had previously been the responsibility of the school governing body. The department would then process the appointment.
“The process to make appointments to general foreman posts has now changed in that all vacant general foreman posts are now being advertised by the WCED since November 2011.”
She said the school governing bodies then sent the department two or three nominations for appointment, after they had conducted interviews with the potential candidates.
“Once we receive the nominations, each candidate that is approved is now being subjected to vetting before the nominee is appointed on a permanent basis,” said Casey.
Asked if children should not be supervised when on the school grounds, including before school, Casey said the school management decided on the procedures in place for the supervision of pupils before, during and after school.
She said the department had arranged for a psychologist and social worker to visit the school and to counsel the alleged victim and any other pupils needing support.
l Last month, the Cape Argus reported that a Grade 2 pupil had allegedly been raped by a Grade 3 pupil at a Mitchells Plain school.
The incident allegedly happened on the school premises.
Earlier this month the police indicated that the docket was still with the senior public prosecutor and that no arrests had been made.
Casey said both cases were still under investigation.
ilse.fredericks@inl.co.za - Cape Argus