The warning follows the circulation of a video of a
suspected Nyamande Primary School pupil on social media last week who was
visibly drunk and disorderly. Nyamande Primary School is situated in Bulawayo’s
Old Lobengula suburb. In the video, the learner who has since been identified,
is seen sitting in what looks like a school office with officials trying to
locate his grandmother. The learner is in senior classes at the school.
Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Abednico Ncube told Sunday News that the
matter was under investigation.
“The school was identified and efforts to arrest the drug
peddler are still underway. It was established, however, that the learner had
stolen R20 from his grandmother which he used to buy 375mls of hot stuff which
he went on to dilute with a fizzy soft drink. The boy drank the alcohol during
lesson time in the classroom after asking for permission to have his ‘drink’
from the teacher as he claimed that his throat was running dry and he got
drunk,” said Insp Ncube.
Unbeknown to the teacher, the boy was consuming alcohol
instead, leading to the concoction intoxicating him and causing him to behave
in an unacceptable manner. Insp Ncube said that the police were investigating
the video which had gone viral and appeared to have been recorded in a school
set up. He added that the police were making efforts to establish the person
who recorded the video at the school.
“We urge authorities, teachers, parents, and, members of
the public to desist from taking videos of vulnerable people or those in
distress and sending them on social media as that is an offence, in any case,
people were supposed to protect the child and carry medical measures which
include but not limited to calling parents, police or other stakeholders,” he
said.
In the video the learner seems to be surrounded by school
authorities while holding an empty container from where he was drinking. He
also claimed that he smoked something out of an eletricity bulb, marijuana, and
takes codeine-containing cough syrups.
He further names the drug peddler. Teachers who had
gathered to witness the spectacle tried in vain to keep the learner calm as he
paced up and down the room briefly requesting to go and sleep in the sun. The
boy, however, acknowledges that his grandmother was going to beat him up if she
was to see him in a drunken state.
Drug buse has been rife in communities and schools around
the country with the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education saying they
have a zero-tolerance to substance abuse. Ingutsheni Central Hospital in
Bulawayo, the only public psychiatric institution, is inundated with drug and
substance abuse victims who are admitted to the hospital with numbers
ballooning on a regular basis. Hospital officials have also raised alarm over
the large numbers of young people who need rehabilitation from substance abuse.
Sunday Mail
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