Gweru (New Ziana) -Midlands Chiefs Council chairperson Chief Nkwananzi Zama Ngungumbane has blamed parents for the immoral activities that some pupils are engaging in within schools in the absence of teachers who are on strike over salary reviews.

Chief Ngungumbane castigated parents for failing to support teachers in shaping the characters of their children saying the guardians had relegated their responsibilities to educators.

He said parents should be responsible for the social and societal upkeep of their children and should desist from blaming teachers for all the negative social behaviours of school children.

“It is a collective responsibility of the community at large not of teachers alone to mould the behaviour of children, to give them the Ubuntu for them to be morally upright because we have a current set up where teachers are mostly absent from schools so if parents neglect their children who then will be their keeper,” he asked.

“It is not an excuse to say teachers’ absence is the result of what children are doing. We have child headed families where some parents are in the Diaspora while the children are left home without an elderly person to give them proper guidance. These children are even exposed to explicit content such as pornographic material and then become experimental.

“As society we also have to understand that every child in your community is your child hence it becomes a collective responsibility to create the future leaders that we want,” he said.

Teachers have been on strike since September when schools opened for examination classes and there have been reports that pupils were engaging in deplorable activities in their absence such as taking illegal substances.

New Ziana