Was the Education Department Responsible for the Rheenendal Bus Tragedy?
The province’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) is expecting a busy 2013 but will be focusing on an important matter carried over from last year, a subject dear to us in Knysna, the Rheenendal bus crash.
First on the agenda for SCOPA is the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) report on pupil transport. The report was presented to Scopa last year on condition that it remained confidential. reporter, Clayton Barnes, reports that:
“Sources say the report shows that the department was negligent because it had not fulfilled the terms of its contract with pupil-transport service providers and had not inspected its vehicles regularly. The negligence included not checking whether the number of seats in a vehicle matched the number of pupils the service provider was contracted to transport.
ANC MPL and Scopa member Max Ozinsky said the department was aware of the report at least five months before the Rheenendal tragedy.
Fourteen pupils and their driver died in Rheenendal when their school bus plunged into a river outside Knysna in 2011.
Last year, WCED head Penny Vinjevold told Scopa that the report could not be made public as it was an internal document.
Ozinsky said the ANC would consider launching a Promotion of Access to Information application to compel the department to make public the report.”
The WCED had a duty of care towards those children who perished in the bus accident and they failed them and if there is a nexis between omissions of the department and the accident they must be liable.
This issue should have been a priority. That it hasn’t been resolved after so long can only mean that they are incompetent enough to warrant firing or they are in fact covering something up.
Now what are they hiding? They the Daceivers are pointing finger at the ANC for not releasing the Nkandla Report but the are for heaven’s sake doing exactly the same! Of course they must in terms of the common law be held liable since they must have foreseen that such a tragedy might occur and should have taken steps to prevent any harm to our children. I take it that the MEC for Transport have legal advisors to point these things out to him. He has failed the children of Rheenedal dismally and should together with the bus operator be held liable for culpable homicide if not murder if you take into account the recent High Court judgment in the matter where the taxi driver negligently caused the death of scholl children in Blackheath Cape Town by driving through a levelcrossing. The law must take its course.