12 Dec 2019

Jamataka Primary School in Central District has received a solar power plant worth P5.3 million.

Speaking at the plant handing over ceremony on December 10, Ministry of Basic Education technical services director, Mr David Malejane, said in 2013, they came up with an initiative to provide basic necessities to enable pupils in rural areas to be at par in their studies with those in urban areas.

Mr Malejane said they partnered Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) to provide power at schools across the country.

At the time, he said there were about 61 schools, which were off the BPC grid country wide.

He, however, explained that due to financial constraints, they could not provide solar plants at all these schools, hence start with 21 schools.

To date, he stated that all the projects had been completed and handed over to schools. In Tonota region, he said, two schools were not connected to the BPC grid, being Jamataka and Mabesekwa.

Jamataka had since been powered by the solar plant while Mabesekwa had finally been connected to the grid.

Furthermore, he highlighted that the ministry was worried by poor results seen across the country and with efforts being done to capacitate schools, their wish was to see a significant improvement in the results come 2020. The school head, Ms Florah Masalila, said their school would never be the same again, adding that since the project was commissioned there had been a drastic improvement on the staff and pupils performance.

Ms Masalila explained that having been scoring the lowest percentage in region, this year they moved from 41.9 per cent scored in 2018 to 61 per cent on the Primary School Leaving Examinations.

She said they were aiming at improving the mark they had scored because now they had been fully resourced with a new IT resource centre and a photocopying machine.ENDS