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Mozambique: Mozambique Fails to Meet Target for New Classrooms
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
21 January 2008
Posted to the web 22 January 2008
Maputo
Mozambique is nowhere near meeting the Education Ministry's target of building 6,000 new classrooms a year under the "Accelerated Classroom Building Project".
The philosophy underlying this project is to involve local communities and local contractors. The communities are supposed to provide the materials, such as local sand, stone and bricks, while the contractors provide the money and the technique required.
But, according to Education Minister Aires Aly, last year the sector only built 2,000 classrooms in the entire country. While only a third of the target, this was much better than the figure for 2006, when, out of 1,467 classrooms envisaged, only 26 were completed.
At the time, the explanation given was that the ministry had run into problems in sending the funds needed to the provincial directorates of education, under what was then a relatively new scheme for decentralisation of powers.
That problem seems to have been overcome. Aly told AIM that the money now exists, and the current constraint is a lack of technical capacity.
To meet the target, Mozambique would need to spend 72 million US dollars a year (at an average cost of 12,000 dollars per classroom). In 2007, only 24 million dollars was spent.
"Our target is 6,000 classrooms a year", stressed Aly. "We have the money for this, but we face a lack of technical capacity".
Aly thought the quality of school building had improved in 2007, but there were still problems of contractors failing to meet agreed deadlines. Many buildings, which should have been completed by May 2007, will now only be concluded in 2008.
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These building failures, together with the shortage of teachers, explain why thousands of children of primary school age are still not attending school.
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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