SowetanLive reports that each public school in Gauteng will be assigned with one police officer that the school can call on whenever there is a problem.  

This was recently revealed by Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi.  "A police will be allocated to a school in an event a school needs police, then the said officer will assist accordingly.  We are also working with mobile companies so that when one presses number nine on their cellphone and holds it for more than 30 seconds it will ring to the nearest police station, alerting the police identified to work with that particular problem," Lesufi indicated.   However, despite Lesufi's explanation that the officers would be on standby at their stations, police spokesperson Lungelo Dlamini said police could not act as security guards:  "Police can't be assigned to stay at schools.  The department must employ security guards," he pointed out.  In the last few months, Gauteng has experienced a surge of violence at public schools.  Education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga observed that most of the violence happened outside the schools:  "These are not random acts of violence, the origins of the problems are out there in the streets of society.  The solutions are not with the department, but with the people themselves, the police, the justice system and all other stakeholders.  The streets around the schools are battlegrounds," he stated

• Read the full original of Yoliswa Sobuwa’s report in the above regard at SowetanLive

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