Africa-Press – Botswana. Ministry of Education and Skills Development has targeted to complete cyclic maintenance of school projects on time and within budget.
Assistant Minister, Mr Aubrey Lesaso said his ministry had a five-year cyclic maintenance programme, which was designed to attend to school requests every five years. He said nearly all cyclic maintenance projects were delayed resulting in cost escalation, time delays or contractors delaying time.
Mr Lesaso was answering a question from the MP for Nata/Gweta, Mr Polson Majaga, in Parliament on Friday.
The question themed: Schools Maintenance Cycle Supervision and Project Maintenance, was concerned with whether all schools in Botswana due for maintenance had been budgeted for.
Mr Majaga also wanted to understand the cause of the delay, if the maintenance works were awarded to Batswana and youth companies and if there were plans to fast-track the maintenance works.
In that regard, Mr Lesaso said in order to ascertain the extent of the challenge, his ministry was conducting a rapid conditional assessment of educational institutions across the country.
“The assessment exercise has been broken down to allow for reporting of the worst affected schools within three weeks and all schools by the end of the year. The report will provide an up to date picture of the condition of all our institutions and also allow for the estimated cost of necessary repairs. The ministry will then seek additional funding to address urgent maintenance needs in phases,” he said.
He said from the financial year 2017/18, 18 out of 20 schools that were targeted for cyclic maintenance were not completed.
He said for two of the schools, contracts were terminated and then resuscitated in the financial year 2023/24.
Mr Lesaso said delay in the maintenance of schools emanated from a number of challenges which included procurement processes that were often subjected to litigation, poor contractor performance and funding constraints
Mr Lesaso also added that out of the 34 schools targeted to be maintained under the Transitional National Development Plan (TNDP), only 10 had been budgeted for.
However, he said his ministry was following all legal guidelines in the procurement of contractors to carry out maintenance in schools including prioritising citizen-owned companies.
In order to expedite the work and improve on quality, Mr Lesaso said his ministry had decentralised some key personnel from the Department of Technical Services to enhance the monitoring of maintenance projects.
He also acknowledged that some delays in completion of projects were a result of poor supervision from the officials.
He said cyclic maintenance was only focused on buildings and did not include holistic maintenance of the schools, which included internal roads and school perimeter fence among others.
Earlier on, motivating the question on behalf of Mr Majaga, the MPfor Gaborone North, Mr Mpho Balopi said delayed maintenance of school infrastructure was of great concern across the country.
He wondered if government had a plan to undertake maintenance, adding that it was important for such works to be done when schools were on recess.
Mr Balopi appealed to government to consider using graduates of vocational colleges to carry out the maintenance of schools, adding that the delayed maintenance was worsening the damage to infrastructures.
MP for Bobonong, Mr Taolo Lucas was skeptical as to whether brigades and technical colleges’ graduates were well equipped to carry out maintenance as they were taught under conditions with limited resources.
Mr Lucas asked why the ministry took so long to act after projects were abandoned incomplete.
Thamaga/Kumakwane MP, Mr Palelo Motaosane concurred that brigades and vocational colleges’ learners must be engaged in doing maintenance works at schools and other government facilities to gain practical experience.
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