Machinga District Council petitioned to renovate school

Machinga Development Association (Madas) has written Machinga District Council to renovate classrooms at Malundani Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) after a windstorm blew off the roofs in December last year.

The incident prompted Malundani school management committee to suspend classes for Form One to Three, a development that has angered Madas to push the council to urgently renovate classrooms, arguing the situation is compromising the school’s education standards.

In a letter to Machinga district commissioner (DC), dated January 28 2019 co-signed by Madas chairperson Bridon M’baya and his secretary Rabson Assam which The Nation has seen, the association is expressing its concerns over the council’s failure to renovate classrooms whose cost was estimated at K4.5 million.

Reads the letter in part: “Learners at Malundani CDSS are missing out on valuable class time while their counterparts in other schools are advancing with their education. We are particularly dismayed with this because Machinga has suffered from poor education infrastructure for years.”

In an interview yesterday, M’baya said the council has not responded to the association’s queries and he threatened to take undisclosed action on the matter.

But in a separate interview, Machinga DC Bester Mandele said his office was not officially communicated to on the matter. He said he only saw the letter from Madas on social media.

He, however, said Ministry of Education, Science and Technology is better placed to comment as district councils have no authority to handle issues to do with secondary education. n