Zimbabwe government to engage China in building school infrastructure

via Zimbabwe government to engage China in building school infrastructure October 26, 2013 by Veneranda Langa for Newsday

THE Zanu PF government says it plans to engage its all-weather Chinese friends to build infrastructure at several satellite schools located in the new resettlement areas where pupils are learning under makeshift buildings.

Education minister Lazarus Dokora told Senate on Thursday that he would leave for China in the next few weeks to pursue the deal. Dokora was responding to Mashonaland West Senator Mike Byton Musaka (Zanu PF), who wanted to know if there was going to be a systematic programme to provide decent infrastructure at schools in resettlement areas as some pupils were still conducting lessons in disused tobacco barns.

In 2011, NewsDay reported a case where a 14-year-old pupil at Munhondo Primary School in Darwendale was killed after a makeshift tobacco barn classroom they were using collapsed and left several of her classmates injured.

The school used the barn to accommodate all its 600 pupils from nearby farms.

“As a ministry we are at the moment looking for funding partners and stakeholders, and we will be launching a one-day conference on the single issue of infrastructural development for our school institutions and this will include resettlement areas, communal areas as well as high-density areas,” said Dokora.

“I am also looking at the external friends of this country and will be making a trip to China in the next few weeks to see whether we can develop sufficient bonding there that will eventually lead to an impact in infrastructure provision for our learners,” he said.