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Education Deputy Minister Patrick Ngoma has commended United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) for funding the construction of Malabo Primary School in Western Province at a cost of K3,904,713.34 equivalent to US$765,630.
Mr Ngoma noted that schools in the province and in the Barotse plains have continued to be in a bad state mainly due to the perennial floods.
He said the situation implies that many children in the two areas have not had an opportunity to go to decent schools compared to their counterparts in other parts of the country.
ZANIS reports that Mr Ngoma said this in Mongu yesterday at a ground breaking ceremony of the construction of Malabo Primary, which will be constructed as a floating school in the Barotse plains.
UNICEF Country Representative, Dr Iyorlumun Uhaa, retariated the organisation’s commitment to ensuring that children in the country have access to education.
And in a speech read on his behalf by Western Province Acting Assistant Secretary Richard Mulwanda, Western Province Permanent Secretary Emmanuel Mwamba said Malabo Primary School is just a representative of many schools in the province that get affected by the floods.
He observed that the construction of the floating school will act as an example of what should be done to other schools in similar circumstances.
Meanwhile, Provincial Education Officer Muyangwa Kamutumwa noted that the school had been experiencing terrible effects from floods because it was constructed using pole and mud.
Mr Kamutumwa explained that every year, the learning institution had to be renovated or closed during the flood periods forcing the management to transfer pupils temporarily to other schools on the upper land.
He said the construction of the floating school at Malabo Primary came about as a result of a group of at St. Johns Secondary School in Mongu who won a climate change competition sponsored by UNICEF.
Mr Kamutumwa added that the price involved choosing one educational challenge in the province of which the pupils settled on proposing the construction of a school in the Barotse plains of Mongu.
