Community members of Kasubi woke up to a shock on 24th May 2016 when the school they had left the previous day was half standing by morning. The demolition of Kasubi Family Primary school is going to leave over 800 pupils out of school come 6th June when schools are expected to resume officially.
The Kasubi Family School is located in the biggest slum area of Kampala, where 5.409 households are fighting for survival. Stop Child Labour is supporting local partner organisation Nascent to make this area child labour free. Stop Child Labour officers visited the school just the day before it was demolished. We were impressed by the efforts of community members to get all children out of work and (re)integrate them into school. We have seen very promising results. Much progress had already been booked. And we are convinced that much more can happen as long as we stand together. Therefore, we are shocked that the school has been demolished and that these children are left behind with nowhere to go.
Stop Child Labour stands together with community members and community leaders of Kasubi to condemn this action. This is a great violation of the right to education of these children who were already struggling to learn in an environment with limited facilities. Demolishing their school is as good as leaving them homeless. We condemn it in the strongest terms possible.
So far, no one has come up to explain what happened, who demolished the school, what the intentions are and what action is being taken. The mood around the school is tense with some unknown people seemingly to be guarding the school and market business outside the school is moving on normally.
We – Stop Child Labour together with local partner organisations Nascent, Ceford and the Ugandan Education Union UNATU – call upon Government officials responsible, especially Kampala City Council Association, Minister of Education, Science,Technology and Sports MoESTS, politicians and local leaders, to promptly resolve this jumble in order to guarantee to right to education of children in the area.
