The Sunday News
By Vusumuzi Dube
20 October 2012
BUBI Rural District Council has passed a resolution that will see them constructing classroom blocks and teachers’ cottages at various schools in the area yearly, in a bid to attract the best quality of teachers and improve education standards, an official has said.
Bubi RDC chief executive officer, Mr Patson Mlilo, said while they were being disadvantaged by the unavailability of funds, they were prioritising the improvement of schools infrastructure in the district as they had realised that the Government was doing little to assist them thus the deplorable state most of the schools were now in.
“The council recently passed a resolution that will see us constructing at least three classrooms and a teacher’s cottage a year, we will be starting with those schools that do not have access to any donor funds and the Schools’ Development Committees are failing to raise any funds to improve their infrastructure.
“We realised that we can’t just sit back and wait for the Government to do this for us, thus we are using money from our own coffers to do these projects although we cannot do it at a large scale because we are being limited by funds,†said Mr Mlilo.
He said their major challenge was ensuring that children in the district get the best possible education and this could only be achieved by attracting teachers with the necessary experience thus the need to provide them with decent accommodation.
“You must realise that our district had about 10 new resettlements, therefore, in these settlements we had to establish at least two schools mainly using farm houses, so now we have to come in and built decent classrooms and accommodation at these settlements.
“What makes our situation more severe is that we last received Government funding in 2008 for the rehabilitation of these schools, therefore, we have no choice but to do it ourselves,†said the CEO.
He said to date they had started the construction projects at Alpha Secondary School (Ward 21), Battlefield Secondary School (Ward 13), Mdutshane Primary School (Ward 20) and Siganda Primary School (Ward 2).
“These projects are at various stages of completion, we are hoping that we will have completed all of them by the end of the year so that we can move to the next priority schools,†he said.
The CEO said they had a full inventory of all the schools in the district and had noted all their urgent requirements so that they could be addressed accordingly.
“We are also greatful to the Ministry of Water Resources and Management that has selected our district to benefit under the water and sanitation programme where they will build toilets in most of our schools, which will be a big boost as most of these schools don’t have ablution facilities,†said Mr Mlilo.
Education, Sport, Art and Culture Minister, Senator David Coltart has in the past stressed the need for the Government to prioritise schools infrastructure development in  Matabeleland, which he has blamed for the low pass rates being experienced.