Windhoek
The construction of Otjomuise Secondary School, which made headlines last year following some controversy, is at advanced stage and could be completed by the end of the year.
At the time the school – whose construction is funded with a Chinese grant of N$120 million – made headlines, the municipality had insisted the Ministry of Education should pay 50 percent of the market value of the land on which the school would be built.
It was then reported that Khomasdal North Constituency Councillor Margaret Mensah-Williams had written a letter to the municipality questioning why it drafted a policy for national leaders to secure land, while it refused to donate a site for the construction of a school in the Otjomuise informal settlement.
The Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture received a grant from the People’s Republic of China for the construction and development of Otjomuise Secondary School in the Khomasdal North Constituency – yet another project bankrolled with Chinese money.
The N$120 million for the construction of the vision school is considered as one of the biggest Chinese grants or investments for Namibia’s formal education.
The spokesperson of the education ministry Johanna Absalom yesterday said the state-of-the-art vision school will serve grades 8-12 and accommodate 800 learners.
Moreover, Absalom explained that the development of the school culminates from a bilateral agreement signed between the Government of the People’s Republic of China and the Namibian Government.
As per the agreement, the Chinese provide funding while the ministry was required to provide the site for the school. The ministry and the Chinese Embassy in Namibia held a ground-breaking ceremony on November 6, 2014 to mark the beginning of the construction of the school. Construction began on August 16, 2014. The contractual completion date is January 16, 2016.
The school will be equipped with classrooms, sports facilities, a multi-purpose hall, caretaker’s house, a three- storey hostel for boys and girls, and supervisory teachers’ housing.
Over and above the normal classrooms, Absalom said, the school will also have laboratories, specialised classrooms (for music, biology and physics), an athletics track and a pavilion, plus a parking bay for 3-4 big buses.
“The school is designed and modelled as per the latest state-of-the-art design and technology,” she noted.