Education ministry against substandard works in schools

The ministry of education has reaffirmed its commitment in ensuring quality infrastructure in schools.

Its follows a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that the ministry signed last week Wednesday with the National Construction Industry Council of Malawi (NCIC).

The MoU will see NCIC building the capacity of the ongoing construction of 10,900 classroom blocks under the Malawi Education Reform Programme (MERP).

Once completed, the programme will accommodate almost 700,000 learners across the country.

The project, funded by Malawi government, World Bank and Global Partnership for Education (GPE), will also construct 1000 washrooms in primary schools across 34 education districts in the country.

Secretary for education Mangani Chilala Katundu says the partnership will enable NCIC conduct spot checks on projects under the ministry and bring to book contractors whose works will be of substandard.

“The purpose of this collaboration with NCIC is quality as per the standards of the ministry of education. These standards constitutes a safe and appropriate classroom and NCIC will provide us with the necessary support and it will go beyond this project. We will be working with them in other projects,” he said.

In his remarks, NCIC chief executive officer Gerald Khonje said NCIC will ensure that quality construction materials are available in trading centres where constructions are taking place to ensure easy accessibility for them.

“We are developing an accelerated infrastructure delivery system so that we eliminate bottlenecks and challenges that are encountered in delivery of infrastructure in the country,” he stressed

In February this year, President Lazarus Chakwera launched MERP project that was supposed to be completed by June 2025.

However with the collaboration between ministry of education and NCIC, the project will be accelerated and will be completed by December this year.