16 Feb 2016

The unified secondary school at Takatokwane in the Letlhakeng Sub-district is expected to be ready for form four admissions once the contractor hands over phase one of the project this month.

Speaking during a tour of the facility, the Assistant Minister of Education and Skills Development, Mr Moiseraela Goya, said given the state of readiness of the school, the form fours would start classes in March.

The school would admit 250 form four students. The minister, however, stressed that on opening day, everything should be in place though every project had its teething problems.

Phase one of the project is at 80 per cent completion and Letlhakeng sub-region chief education officer, Mr Ndineni Mbuso assured the minister that the remaining 20 per cent covered items that were in the procurement process and would be available before students arrived on campus.

Updating the minister on progress thus far, Mr Mbuso said they had recruited all the members of staff needed to run the school including the school head and the deputy adding that they would begin duty on March 1.

He said for the remaining 10 vacant additional teaching posts, they had engaged eight qualified temporary teachers on C band scale.

Mr Mbuso also told the minister about the shortage of staff accommodation. He said they were expecting a staff complement of 150 including teaching and non-teaching staff, but they only had 65 houses to accommodate them.

Acting director; technical services, Mr David Malejane, said the P414 million project had been split into two phases.

Phase one will be handed over on February 22 for use by the form four students. This included two hostels for boys and girls, 20 staff houses, home economics and science labs.
The rest of the buildings including sports grounds constitute phase two of the project, of which Mr Malejane said will be completed this year in November.

The school head, Mr Khan Masau said the community had been sensitised on new developments and an emblem as well as a school uniform had been chosen. He, however, requested for the old facilities to be renovated to match the new facilities.

The contractor of Red East company, Mr Jamin Xie assured Mr Goya that he would handover phase one of the project end of this month save for the kitchen which would be ready on the second term. In the meantime, he said they had refurbished the old kitchen for use. Ends