— Yarrowkabra Secondary ahead of schedule, slated for May 2023 completion

CONSTRUCTION works on the Yarrowkabra Secondary School is moving ahead of schedule with the school some 65 per cent complete while works on the St Rose’s High School, in Georgetown, is on schedule with some 55 per cent of the work already completed.

This was reported to Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, when she recently paid visits to the construction sites of the two schools. According to a statement from the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Yarrowkabra School is five per cent ahead of the timeline, and is expected to be completed by May 2023, as per contract.

“[The minister] expressed her satisfaction that the school is ahead of schedule,” the statement said.

The progress represents significant developments for the two schools which had both previously been plagued with issues in their construction under their previous contractors.

An $827 million contract had previously been awarded to BK International Inc for the construction of Yarrowkabra Secondary, Soesdyke-Linden Highway, in 2020, while Courtney Benn Contracting Services Limited had been awarded a $352.7 million contract for the construction of a new building for St. Rose’s High School in 2018.

The Yarrowkabra Secondary, the very first secondary school in Yarrowkabra, Soesdyke-Linden Highway, had initially been scheduled to be completed in March 2021; however by November 2020, the contractor had only completed five per cent of the work.

The government subsequently terminated the contracts with both contractors and commenced legal action against both companies. A settlement was later reached with Courtney Benn Contracting Services while proceedings are still going on against BK.

The new contract to construct the St. Rose’s High School was awarded to Shandong Degian International while the contract for the construction of the Yarrowkabra Secondary School is being carried out by R. Bassoo and Sons.

Each project has a consultancy firm which is supervising the quality and pace of ongoing works. Kalitech Inc is the consultancy firm for the St. Rose’s High School project while Vikab Engineering is working with the Yarrowkabra Secondary School project.

These two new schools are expected to be outfitted with modern classrooms, laboratories and industrial arts departments which will cater to TVET subjects, sanitary blocks and other auxiliary buildings.

A new addition to the Soesdyke-Linden Highway, the Yarrowkabra Secondary school, is expected to accommodate approximately 600 students from Yarrowkabra and neighbouring communities along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway.

ERASE
The new secondary school will complement the already existing Yarrowkabra Nursery and Primary Schools in the community and will erase the need for the use of Primary Tops, and enable the ministry to close some primary tops that were opened or re-opened between 2015 and 2020.

The construction of the two schools, is among works ongoing at a number of secondary schools across the country, and is part of the Ministry of Education’s goal to achieve universal secondary education by 2025.

In addition to the rebuilding of St. Rose’s High School and construction of the Yarrowkabra Secondary School, recently constructed schools include the Good Hope Secondary School on the East Coast.

A contract was recently awarded for the reconstruction of the North Ruimveldt Secondary, which was destroyed by fire, and the expansion of other schools such as East Ruimveldt Secondary, Queen’s College and The Bishops’ High School, to create more space to accommodate the growing number of learners.

According to Minister Manickchand, the increase in the number of learners is due to the education system retaining more children in school; however, this has placed some strain on space within schools.

The construction ongoing at the various secondary schools is of crucial importance to provide comfortable access to secondary education for the students.

“We’re working really hard to achieve universal secondary education within this first term [in office]. So you will see two new schools going up in Region Three, one in Upper Mazaruni (Region Seven), one in Region One, the rebuilding of the North West Secondary School in Region One just to ensure we can bring in universal secondary education just as we were able to achieve universal primary education. So you are going to see Universal Secondary Education before the end of 2025 and we will be very happy to do that,” the minister is quoted as saying.