As schools’ disinfection begins today

The Federal Government yesterday said the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations would hold from August 4 to September 5.

The Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, said this at the briefing of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.

He said that was the outcome of series of meetings of stakeholders.

According to him, this presents an opportunity for all the states to prepare their schools to accommodate the students coming to sit and write the examinations.

He said the local timings for the country would be published while concluding stakeholders’ meeting with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) would hold day.

He

also

advised

parents and guardians to ensure their wards register for ongoing National Examinations Council (NECO) examinations registration.

He said dates for the National Business and Technical Education Board (NABTEB) and NECO exams would be announced soon.

“From the 4th of August to the 5th of September, parents please take note. Last week, the PTF chairman announced that school facilities will be available for those who want to go into revision classes.

“As soon as we conclude WAEC, we will take up the NABTEB and NECO exams. The idea is that we have a month from now till then. Those who can and those who are willing, the states who are willing should make their schools available for their children to revise.

“We have done the most we can to talk with our representatives at WAEC and this (Monday) afternoon, we confirmed dates allotted for the exams will be from the 4th of August through to the 5th of September. Local timings will be published.

“From tomorrow, this is what we are taking into our concluding stakeholder meetings with NCDC, Nigerian Union of Teachers, everybody will be at the stakeholders meeting tomorrow and this date is what we are going to look at.

“We will be asking that those who are not prepared yet should please go and prepare.

“We are continuing with registration for NECO. For those who have not concluded registration along those lines, this is the time to update and get your registration done,” Nwajiuba said.

The

Minister

of

Environment,

Muhammad Mahmood, said the disinfection of schools, across the nation, against the spread of COVID-19 in preparation for resumption of class activities would start today.

He said, “Earlier, I told you that we’ve sat with the Ministry of Education and we have the list of all the schools that need to be disinfected before resumption. Well, what we plan to do now is to decontaminate the centres that’ll be used.”

He said the process was intentionally delayed “because it’s better to disinfect and decontaminate within a short period of time so that the kids will be going back into these classes when they’ve been freshly decontaminated.

“So it is between tomorrow (Tuesday) and the rest of the week. We have enough teams and people that we will engage to get that done. So rest assured that your kids will be returning to a safe environment when they resume,” he said.