THE MINISTRY of Education has approved the award of 42 contracts to carry out maintenance work mostly in primary and all-age schools throughout the island before the start of the next academic year, Monday, September 1.
Most of the work include problems of sanitation, repairing or replacing roofs and ensuring that schools have adequate water supplies, according to Lauriston Wilson, the ministry's director of technical services.
The Jamaica Information Service quoted Mr. Wilson as saying that they had meetings with regional education directors to identify schools that may have problems re-opening, especially those relating to sanitation and water supply.
Mr. Wilson said the maintenance programme was ongoing and that special attention was given to schools with critical needs to ensure they would be in a position to comfortably accommodate students come September.
RE-OPENING PROBLEMS
He said they had identified schools that would have problems re-opening, carried out estimates of work to be done, and identified contractors who had already started work on some schools.
The JIS said contracts had also been awarded for the provision of 21,000 desks and chairs for students and 1,000 others for teachers of grades one to three. Delivery should be completed by the end of September.
About $24 million was provided in the 2003/2004 estimates of expenditure for the maintenance programme at the primary level and $37 million for furniture and equipment.
In addition, a grant of $10,000 is being provided to each primary and all-age school to carry out its own small repairs, and $20,000 each has been allocated at the secondary level. The allocation to schools is in addition to $1 million provided to each regional office to enable them to respond to emergency situations.
