NEW SCHOOL YEAR PANDEMIC

In the news, the Ministry of Education has announced that the new school year will commence on September 27th, 2020 without giving any details about the preparation and measures taken especially with the partially lockdown in the country to avoid the outbreak of COVID-19.
It is true that COVID-19 cases are considerably declining in Sudan, but that doesn’t mean that it became safe to start the new school year because there are other reasons which make opening the school risky.
There are several issues which should be reviewed on top of which is the rocketing fares of public transport for the students a matter that will make it difficult for the families to provide hundreds of pounds for their kids to pay it just for transportation from and to their schools everyday.
Another issue is the apparent difficulty in getting bread for the breakfast of the students considering the big numbers of students in each school.
Then come the rainy season which already started and will last in mid-October and that means that in case of heavy rains, most of the schools will close down because of its fragile infrastructure and because it will be difficult for the students to go to schools.
The question that poses itself is did the Ministry prepare a study on the above issues?
I believe that resuming studies in schools and universities will be disastrous and might lead the students to go to the streets and demonstrate against the government, especially with the current fragile security situation and the attempts of the deep state figures to create chaos in the country.
I urge the authorities in the Ministry of Education to reconsider their decision of starting the new school year and to delay it until things are stable.
The delay of starting the new school year can be dealt with through increasing the periods and cancelling Saturday holidays besides other educational measures to compensate the missed days of the school year.
Beware the new school year pandemic.