Education lacks funds to make schools COVID-19 ready

“The budgets have not been approved so the ministry still has no money to make the schools COVID-19 ready. Additional toilets and sinks are needed and all the other necessary safety measures. We have to wait for the budgets to be approved so that the minister of Finance and Planning can make the money available for the Education Ministry,” said Education and Culture Minister Marie Levens at Monday’s COVID-19 press conference. The minister explained that the principals have been asked to start financing these things from the school funds so that the schools will be ready to open their doors for the students on October 1. “Several principals have already been instructed to tap into the school fund to put everything in place for the start of the new school year. The ministry has also received many donations that include surgical masks and things that are needed to sanitize the hands and the classrooms. Hopefully the Finance Ministry will be ready within two weeks to make the funds available,” said the minister. A lot of money is needed to prepare the schools located in the hinterland. Donations alone will not be enough. “The budgets are already on paper and we hope that they will be given the green light soon so that we can start with the projects for clean potable water and other measures for the schools located in the hinterland,” said Minister Levens who added that it will not be necessary for the schools to ask parents to pitch in. “But if there are parents who want to make a voluntary donation, they can do so. It is not necessary to make it mandatory for parents to purchase face shields for the children. There is nothing about this in the protocols. We even want to scrap the face masks and if the number of COVID-19 cases keeps plummeting, we hope that the face masks will become a thing of the past after a few weeks.”