Maputo, 1 Feb (AIM) – The Mozambican Minister of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Nyeleti Mondlane, on Wednesday re-inaugurated the Malhampsene Primary School, in the southern municipality of Matola.
The school rehabilitation, budgeted at 117 million Meticais (1.8 million dollars at the current exchange rate), was funded by the aluminum smelter Mozal.
The school has now twelve brand new classrooms to be added to nine rooms that were rehabilitated. Before this inauguration, over 3.000 pupils were studying in the open air, under trees, sitting on the ground.
The new classrooms have new desks and modern blackboards. The rehabilitation also included installing new toilets, and hand washing facilities, a water supply system, administrative blocks, and a guardhouse.
According to Mondlane, speaking at the ceremony, “a safe and healthy school environment is essential.”
“We, therefore, call on everyone to engage in preventing and combating the consumption of alcohol and other drugs”, the Minister said. “Combating gender-based violence, child marriages and early pregnancies are challenges that require our collective attention for the success of our children”.
For his part, the Chairperson of the Mozal Board of Directors, Samuel Samo Gudo, said that, prior to the rehabilitation, the school buildings, in addition to their high state of disrepair, had little capacity to house all the students.
“More than half were studying in improvised classrooms under trees, which was detrimental to the teaching-learning process, especially during bad weather”, he said.
(AIM)
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