City to provide over 200 classrooms to barangays

The city government is expected to turn over at least 200 classrooms to its various lowland and upland barangays starting this year until 2008.

City consultant on education Joy Augustus Young yesterday said the city government has already begun constructing several school buildings in some barangays, and had turned over a finished one last week.

The city has turned over a 20-classroom building to Talamban Elementary School, and had already put on bid the construction of a P15 million building for high school.

Young said the program of works for the 20-classroom building for the Talamban National High School has been prepared already.

He said the city is set also to turn over the 20-classroom school building to the upland barangay of Sirao.

For barangay Mambaling, the city planned to construct a 30-classroom building for Alaska Elementary School and, for such purpose, had demolished the other week the squatters’ shanties located near the school.

Young said the initial plan was for a 24-classroom only, at a budget of P700,000 per classroom, but the city decided to expand this to 30 classrooms to accommodate more students.

Another 24-classroom building would be built in Mambaling Elementary School, and Young said this project is already put for bidding.

Other projects, now under bidding, are 16-classroom buildings for Tejero Elementary School, Ramon Duterte Elementary School, and Tisa Elementary School.

The construction of classrooms for barangay Lahug and the upland barangay of Toong are also underway, and Young said more classrooms would be built in other upland barangays, numbering to more than 100 classrooms in all.

“Grabe ato construction sa bukid karon kay daghan mga classrooms nga dilapidated na kayo,” Young said about the city’s thrust for more classrooms in the mountain barangays.

“The city has given priority to construction of more school buildings because we lack classrooms and many of our classrooms are already dilapidated,” he said.

He said these projects have enough funds that the city got from sources, such as the national government, the city’s special education fund, and the internal revenue allotment of Senator Serge Osmeña III, the brother of Mayor Tomas Osmeña.

Young further said that the private sector have been helping on these projects. These are the Aboitiz Company (for the Toong school project), the Visayas Electric Company (for the school at Cantimpla in barangay Taptap), and World Vision (for the school in Budlaan). — Wenna A. Berondo/RAE