With only two days left to the classroom construction deadline for the Nine-Year-Basic-Education program (9YBE), most of the classrooms in Gasabo district are not yet roofed making it lag behind the other two districts of Kicukiro and Nyarugenge.

The Ministry of Education set January 15 as the deadline for the completion of the 9YBE classrooms around the country.

According to the Gasabo vice Mayor in Charge of Social Affairs, Narcisse Ndagijimana, some of the classrooms are yet to be roofed and most of them have not been cemented.

Gasabo district has the smallest number of classrooms to construct in this programme with only 24 classrooms out of the 119 to be built in Kigali city.

"We still have a number of things to do on the classrooms and I think the delay was caused by the running out of some materials that the Ministry of Education provided,” Ndagijimana said.

He however, said that they were working round the clock to see that the work is completed before the new school term commences.  

Speaking to The New Times, Kigali City Council, vice Mayor in charge of Social Affairs, Jean d’ Arc Gakuba, had a different view about the delay.
"I think something is wrong somewhere, because districts were given the same materials. As we speak, districts like Kicukiro are almost through with the whole exercise and yet it had 68 classrooms to construct,” said Gakuba.

Kicukiro launched its first phase of the classrooms on January 5 in the three sites in Gikondo and Kimisange sectors and they promised to be through with the remaining before the beginning of the term.

Meanwhile, teachers from Gasabo district who had gone for months without pay have received their salaries.
Some of the more than 150 teachers had gone for more than nine months without pay.

Gasabo District Advisory Council (DAC) had given the vice mayor an ultimatum of December 25 to have solved the teachers problems or face the axe.

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