Schools gear up for new year

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KUWAIT CITY, Aug 15: An engineering source outlined the plan of the Educational Facilities and Planning Sector in the Ministry of Education to equip schools and prepare for the 2023/2024 academic year. He revealed that the implementation of the plan began in June and will continue until September, reports Al-Rai daily. He explained that schools were inspected and reports were prepared concerning school facilities in the electricity and civil fields, and sent to maintenance companies for necessary action. The electricity work is minimal, as it usually relies on inspecting the lighting in classrooms and school facilities and replacing some of them if necessary.

As for civil works, engineers prepare reports on school floors, paint for the walls, and the condition of ceilings and toilets. The Engineering Affairs Department in the ministry then addresses the contracting company. Unfortunately, the companies implement the simple requests in a friendly manner, but refuse to take the necessary action for the difficult requests with high costs until the issuance of official approvals to extend the contracts. Therefore the lack of sufficient budget in the Department of Engineering Affairs prompted the companies not to implement some work, even through subcontractors. Regarding the condition of air-conditioning in schools, the source described it as “the problem of problems in the summer season”.

Conditions
He said, “Despite the difficult weather conditions, and the inability to inspect about 900 schools and maintain them at 100 percent, we have carried out preventive maintenance for a large number of units since June. This included washing the unit, checking the gas level, replacing spare parts, then operating the unit and ensuring its coolness. This was followed by preparing reports regarding the matter and sending them to the administration.” The source indicated that approvals to extend air-conditioning maintenance contracts reached companies through the WhatsApp application, and they were not officially notified about them yet. He said, “The large number of works that have been done will create problems. Considering the fact that the school air conditioners are closed for a few months, and will be started in September, we are surprised by many malfunctions. This is known and expected annually, because when an air conditioner is closed during summer period, the device starts leaking.

Reports
We wrote reports in which we asked to operate the units on an interval basis. However, the Ministry of Electricity and Water refused. We said we agree with the school guards to operate them at least at night, and they said most of the guards are on vacation and travel to their countries during this period.”

In addition, the source revealed, “A committee has been formed to determine the condition of school buildings and departmental buildings affiliated to the ministry and to prepare notes regarding their need for regular maintenance, radical maintenance, or demolition and reconstruction. Schools are visited and reports are written about them, but unfortunately the lack of a budget stopped all our work. When we raised the matter to the competent authorities, they told us that contracts and tenders will not be approved before November, based on hints from the senior leadership in the ministry.”

He stressed that the priorities for the implementation of demolition and reconstruction of schools have not been determined in any of the educational zones so far due to the lack of sufficient budget for their implementation. The source indicated that the cost of demolition and reconstruction varies according to the educational stage (kindergarten, primary, middle, and secondary), but ranges usually from KD 4 million to KD 7 million per school. He affirmed that the plan for the educational facilities sector to hire Kuwaitis for engineering jobs comes in implementation of the correspondence received from the Civil Service Commission (CSC) regarding reducing the number of expatriate engineers

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