Over K100m needed for schools rehab

MORE than K100 million is needed to rehabilitate both secondary and primary Schools which were in a deplorable state countrywide, Chief Government spokesperson Dora Siliya has said.

Ms Siliya noted that 600 out of 10,167 both schools were are in bad state and needed rehabilitation.

She said this was because some of them were built over 50 years ago.

Ms Siliya was responding to a question on behalf of General Education Minister David Mabumba, asked by Zambezi East Member of Parliament Brian Kambita in Parliament.

Mr Kambita asked whether Government had any plans to rehabilitate the Zambezi Secondary School in Zambezi and if so, when the plans would be implemented.

In her response, Ms Siliya indicated that Government was aware that some schools were in a bad state.

She cited Zambezi Secondary School as being among the 600 schools that needed urgent rehabilitation.

She assured that Government would rehabilitate the schools as soon as funds were available.

Ms Siliya also stressed the need for Government to put in place a maintenance policy to ensure maintenance of old schools.

“A maintenance policy is needed because even under the Ministry, in terms of maintenance that budget line just comes generally under infrastructure and most of the times the funds just go to construction of new schools and the maintenance of old schools is sort of overlooked.

“So Government would very quickly through the Ministry of General Education try to streamline and have a clear policy on maintenance so that we do not have investment in infrastructure go to waste after so many years because of lack of maintenance,” Ms Siliya said.