Johannesburg – An Eastern Cape Principal has now been fired for sending a pupil into a pit toilet to look for his phone.
The incident happened at Luthuthu Junior Secondary School in Ugie, Eastern Cape, in March this year.
The principal, Lubeko Mgandela, is said to have forced the 11-year-old pupil to climb into the pit toilet to search for his phone and promised him R200 if he found it.
It’s reported that he later apologised and gave the child R50.
He was arrested and faced charges of attempted murder, but it was later changed to a charge of Child Abuse.
Vuyiseka Mboxeka, media liaison officer for Eastern Cape education MEC, said Lubeko was dismissed after pleading guilty at a disciplinary hearing.
Mboxeka said the MEC, Fundile Gada, accepts the outcome and the findings of the disciplinary hearings.
“The MEC is of the view that when parents send children to school, they do so with the expectation they will be protected and taken care of. What has happened in this case was a serious human rights violation,” she says.
“He had to be taken out of the system because he has proven he cannot be trusted with the responsibility of shaping the futures of young Eastern Cape children.”
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