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Home / Vergenoeg creates conducive environment for learners
Vergenoeg creates conducive environment for learners
2018-08-02Staff Report 2 Tauno Iileka VERGENOEG - Mines and Energy Deputy Minister Kornelia Shilunga has commended Vergenoeg Primary School community hostel for making substantial efforts to create a conducive living environment for learners. According to school principal Josia Taukuheke, meals for learners are served in an open dining hall, as the existing dining hall – which has a capacity of 40 boarders – is too small to accommodate all 321 boarders. The limited capacities of the dormitories force most school hostel boarders to share single beds. Currently 164 girls share one dormitory while 157 boys share another dormitory, each with a capacity of 100 occupants. Nonetheless, the boarders still keep their dormitories and ablution facilities tidy despite the overcrowding, a situation which impressed Shilunga. Shilunga, who is also the patron of the Kalahari Homeless Indaba, a housing initiative in Kalahari Constituency, visited the hostel last week, to familiarise herself with the living conditions in the constituency of Omaheke Region. Taukuheke added that the kitchen does not have a cool room to store perishable food. The hostel, therefore, relies on a domestic chest freezer to preserve food. The hostel receives a subsidy from the government, which is used to maintain the infrastructure, most of which is made from corrugated iron sheets such as the storage rooms, supervisors’ quarters and their ablution facilities located outside their rooms and laundry rooms. The hostel also uses the subsidy to buy fuel to pump clean water from a borehole and pay salaries for the four hostel supervisors. The hostel has a septic tank pumped out by the hostel staff occasionally. Vergenoeg is a predominantly San community situated some 104 kilometres from the regional capital Gobabis. The school has 11 teaching and three administrative staff. • Tauno Iileka is the senior public relations officer at the Omaheke Regional Council. 2018-08-02Staff Report 2
