Secondary Education Infrastructure Project Lags
By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - SEPTEMBER 30, 2008 is the official closing date of a US$5m loan acquired by the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis to improve the infrastructure of secondary education.
Many projects have been completed due to the loan and counterpart government-funding, but some major components of the original proposal remain unfinished as the closing date draws near.The loan was obtained from the World Bank in 2002 as part of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Education Development Project. According to an overview of the project, the main goals were to increase equitable access to secondary education, improve the overall secondary education infrastructure, and build an information technologies network between the various school districts.
The loan operates as an account opened and withdrawals must be approved by the lender on a ‘per project’ basis and not doled out as a lump sum. Under the terms of agreement, if the Ministry of Education has not used the entire approved US$5m by the September closing date and the OECS does not receive a loan extension from the World Bank, then access to the remaining balance of the loan will be lost.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education Osmond Petty, in an email to SKNVibes.com, said “most project components have been completed,” including purchasing more Form I-III learning materials, providing better training for educators, and developing programmes to aid disadvantaged students.
Also in the process of completion is the estimated US$1.81m learning resource centers in all of the secondary schools in St. Kitts. According to the OECS proposal, these centers were designed to use multi-media technologies to introduce students to the “world of knowledge unavailable through the traditional print or classroom libraries”. ~~Adz:Right~~
To date, only the learning resource centers in Verchilds and Washington Archibald High Schools are fully operational. When asked about the centers at the other high schools, Petty said, “They should be up and running soon.”
Despite these successes, the Ministry of Education has encountered several setbacks in the undertaking, including the non-delivery of some furniture and science equipment to the Charlestown Secondary School in Nevis.
“There are outstanding issues being resolved with suppliers regarding deliveries of furniture and science equipment for that school,” Petty stated.
He went on to say that the Ministry has only been able to construct two of six proposed cafeterias, but the remainder has yet to be commissioned.
Saddlers Secondary School, with the largest estimated price tag of the project at US $3.04m, is still under construction and impedes any project that is directly linked to its completion. Ground was broken for the school on September 7, 2006.
Petty expressed hope that the contractor, Moorjani Caribbean Ltd., would be able to complete the job in the near future and add to the overall “project [being] very successful in terms of meeting its objectives.”
