More than Delivery

We are very blessed to be working in a market that allows us to serve our people as widely as possible. Our core business is the supply of goods to schools – touching the future of South Africa, through the children, who are the ultimate customer, of our clients, the schools


One of the great things viewed during this Covid-19 onslaught is how leadership at each institution, determines how the response is, how efficient and ready the institution is as well as the kind of products and/or services are appropriated to ensure safety of the customer.

 

Protocols

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) – there needs to be set minimum standards to ensure safety and protection. A minimum standard that will protect the agents to the client, being the teachers as well as the customer, the learners.

 Now, it is well documented, articulated and advertised that one of the pillars to ensure we curb the spread of this pandemic, is to improve our hygiene rituals, increasing hand washing as well as sanitizing our hands regularly.

 As indicated in the GUIDANCEFOR COVID-19 PREVENTION AND CONTROL IN SCHOOLS

  • Schools should enforce regular hand washing with safe water and soap, alcohol rub/hand sanitizer or chlorine solution and, at a minimum, daily disinfection and cleaning of school surfaces;
  • Schools should provide water, sanitation and waste management facilities and follow environmental cleaning and decontamination procedures;
  • Schools should promote social distancing (a term applied to certain actions that are taken to slow down the spread of a highly contagious disease, including limiting large groups of people coming together)

All these measures exist to curb the spread and offer maximum protection to all parties, stakeholders and participants in this ecosystem.


The South African landscape

South Africa is a hard place, spatial displacement and skewed development trends have resulted in some schools being vastly well resourced compared to others. For the purpose of this document, we will focus only on previously black-majority schools.

The so-called township (peri-urban environment on the outskirts of established urban areas across South Africa) and rural schools are plagued with the greatest obstacle, infrastructure backlog, access to information, willing environment and legacy challenges, coupled with space constraints.

The average class size, at secondary level in South Africa, is estimated at between 28 and 31 learners per one teacher, this is merely an average, with reality indicates that some schools have class sizes of between 40 to 50 learners to each teacher.

In such situations, social distancing becomes a challenge, as there is physically not enough square-meter real-estate to ensure effective social distancing, as prescribed by the WHO.

So, in light of all the challenges faced, we can make the following suggestions to schools:

  • Strict movements and access to school premises needs to be adhered to. Each person who enters needs to be documented, temperature taken and contact details filed. Great Apps exist to manage this process;
  • Secure liquid soap stations around the school, closely related to the current tap system available, or augmented with water rain water tanks and/or government supplied water tanks. This needs to be coupled with consistent replenishing program for these goods on a monthly basis;
  • Orientate each member of staff as to their role as dispensers of sanitizer in their respective class rooms;
  • Orientate each learner to the individual responsibility that they posses in ensuring that they adhere to basic hygiene, washing hands, and sanitizing regularly.
  • Learners need to minimise contact with each other, moving towards conscious social distancing practices;
  • Face masks and if possible, face-shields need to be worn at all times;
  • As great as disposable gloves are, they will end up increasing the number of items littering across most townships, our view is increased washing of hands and eliminating disposable gloves.

We are all in this together, as commercial partners and as a country – we need to ensure we adhere to all the guidelines and support each other.

#StaySafe           #Sanitize          #WashYourHands


Location: Cape Town, South Africa

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