Gwanda needs more schools
GWANDA town is in need of nine more schools, both primary and secondary, in order to ease congestion at existing ones.
In an interview, Gwanda Mayor, Councillor Knowledge Ndlovu, said the town needs five more primary schools and four secondary schools. He urged interested parties to invest in construction of the schools.
“The town has five primary schools and two secondary schools which is far below what is expected. The existing schools are heavily congested with some being forced to enrol twice as much pupils as they are expected to have.
“Some primary schools have an enrolment of over 1 500 pupils yet they have a capacity of 600 pupils. We call upon partners to invest in constructing these schools. As a municipality we have land readily available for four schools and we are prepared to avail more land when necessary,” he said.
Clr Ndlovu said the municipality had availed 11 hectares of land towards construction of Hlalani Kuhle Primary School in Garikai/ Hlalani Kuhle Suburb.
He said they were in the process of clearing land at the site in preparation for construction works.
Clr Ndlovu said the municipality was going to construct two classroom blocks and handover the project to the community which was going to take over the construction process.
“We have embarked on a process of building a new primary school in a bid to address the challenge of school shortages. Our wish is to have this school up and running by year end as this is an urgent project. For starters, we have allocated some money towards building two classroom blocks as a municipality.
“Thereafter we will hand over to the community. When the school is operational it can generate money that will go towards its expansion. We will be approaching various stakeholders during the course of this project seeking financial and material assistance,” he said.
Clr Ndlovu said a number of pupils looking for learning places were being turned away from schools because of limited space, which was a cause for concern. — @DubeMatutu