$172M contract signed for new teaching block at East Ruimveldt Secondary

Nov 15, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – In the next five months, no longer will Grade Seven students of the East Ruimveldt Secondary School be taught in tents, as the Ministry of Education on Monday signed a contract for the construction of a new teaching block to house the students.

Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand (centre) alongside, Headteacher Katheryn Frazier (left) and PTA President, Dexter Forde (right) overlooking the signing of the contract between a representative from Delph Constrauction (left) and the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr. Alfred King (right)

The contract which is worth $172 million was signed by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Alfred King and the Contractor, Delph Construction at the school’s auditorium. Delph Construction was among five contractors who had placed bids for the project when it was opened at the National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) office last month. According to the NPTAB information, the Ministry had estimated this project to cost $120.9 million.

Delivering opening remarks at the sod-turning ceremony, Headteacher of the school, Ms. Katheryn Frazier, said that the request for the new building was in the pipeline for a long time even before she assumed duties at the institution and now that the request is finally being fulfilled, she expressed gratitude to the Ministry. The new building, according to Special Projects Officer at the Ministry, Ron Eastman, would be a modern flat building which will cater for 10 classrooms. He described that the building will house an administrative block, and that this building will be “fitted with it separate sanitary block so there is no need for the students of this location to traverse to one location to the other, it also have most importantly, an independent electrical infrastructure where we will have a transformer for this building. We have also included in this building AC units for cooling some of the sectional areas.”

The sod-turning for the new Grade Seven block that would be constructed at the East Ruimveldt Secondary School

The construction of this project will be done in five months. The new building will accommodate some 300 students when completed. Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand during her address mentioned that the expansion projects at school are being executed to address the long standing of adequate spacing. “The whole space issue is one that has been facing the Ministry for the last couple of years. This matter wasn’t fixed so it faced us clearly when we came back into school for face-to-face education as we had students in this school who couldn’t fit in the classrooms,” she said.

Kaieteur News had reported that during the recent opening of schools for Grade Seven students on October 3 last, a number of schools in the country had an issue of overcrowding. Addressing this issue, the Education Ministry had put in place certain measures- one being the erecting of tents in the schools’ compound to accommodate the students and a rotation system. East Ruimveldt Secondary along with Graham’s Hall Primary were the only two schools to have utilised tents when classes had resumed.

Meanwhile, Minister Manickchand charged the Contractor to provide quality work, and to do it within the time frame that they set. “Do your work well and you can get more work, do your work poorly and you can see things like liquidated damages and so on being applied against you,” she stated.