$30M Nursery School for Cummings Park

Jul 29, 2014 News

Contractors who are out to fleece the nation represent a major challenge faced by the Ministry of Education. This state of affairs is one that is often characterised by these contractors producing shoddy work.

The meeting at the Cummings Park Community Centre in session on Sunday.

“They give us less stone and less sand; they spend less on the school,” said Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand.
“We pay them for what they are supposed to be building but then at the end of the day what we have is a school that six months after (construction) things start breaking, a year after you have to do more work.”
The Minister’s remarks were forthcoming as she addressed a community meeting at the Cummings Park, East Coast Demerara, Community Centre, on Sunday. At the meeting she was accompanied by senior education officials to discuss plans for the construction of a new nursery school in the community.
Already the sum of $30.8 million has been allocated for the construction of the new school.
Currently, the community has no nursery school with the closest one being situated at Turkeyen which is filled to capacity with some 118 children. At the meeting on Sunday, efforts were made to identify an ideal location for the new educational facility to be constructed.
“The thing about nursery schools we don’t want you taking your children very far, you should be able to take them close to home and in that way you can walk them to school and pick them up after,” said Manickchand.
A decision was in fact made during the meeting to have the new facility encroach on a section of the Cummings Park Community Centre Ground.
According to Minister Manickchand the move to incorporate residents in the decision making process was one premised on a new policy her Ministry has developed. The policy, according to her, is designed to ensure that the Ministry, and by extension the Government, is able to get value for all money expended.
“My new policy is that every new school that we are building we are going to have community meetings like this where we will give to you the drawings (building plan), the bills of quantity so that you can see how much stone and sand (is being used); what is supposed to be done and by when, so that we get quality for our money,” disclosed the Education Minister.
In appealing for the community’s support to ensure that works are done according to detailed specification, she noted that “at the end of the day this is your school, you will be the end users, your children will benefit …While we know that we are doing a good thing we want to make sure that everybody is involved to get good work done.”
The school, the Minister disclosed, is slated to facilitate the learning process of 130 children and already 118 have been registered. Moreover, consideration was given on Sunday to the possible need for the construction of yet another nursery school in the community.
The construction of the new school is scheduled to commence on Wednesday (July 30) and be completed within a five-month period.
Moreover, the school which will have a length of 150 feet x 24 feet is set to be completed by December 30, next. It is expected to include classrooms, a kitchenette, a sick bay, headteacher’s office and a storage area.
Added to this, the works should see the construction of a washroom facility including two separate rooms for persons with disability, three rooms for boys and two rooms for boys, complete with urinal. The facility will also be equipped with water troughs.
The project will also entail the construction of a boundary fence and bridge along with a guard hut.
The stipulated defects and liability period for the project is six months, and according to Minister Manickchand, during this time the Ministry can withhold some of the contractor’s money to carefully scrutinise the completed works. “If anything is defective then we can use that money to fix it,” the Minister told the gathering at the meeting on Sunday.
However, this could be reduced, the Minister said, if parents are able to scrutinise works throughout the project’s life.
The project has been awarded to R. Kissoon Contracting Service.