Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), has said it has created temporary shelter for out-of-school children in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
The Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Mandate Secretary for Education, Mr Danlami Hayyo disclosed this in Abuja on Tuesday while addressing newsmen on the intervention of the FCT minister, Barrister Nyesome Wike in the suspension of the indefinite strike embarked upon by the FCT primary school teachers as well as the minister’s approval of N30.9 billion for rehabilitation of schools in the federal capital.
Hayyo stated that establishment of these temporary shelters will address the issue of out-of-school children, with not only learning but both literacy and numeracy, as well as skill acquisition in collaboration with mass education department for the children to depend on their selves.
He said: “You see the problem now we are facing is that, because of the security issues in our neighbouring states like Kaduna, Nasarawa, Niger, and even some parts of Zamfara, Sokoto, and Yobe and other states, majority of people are relocating to Abuja because of peaceful atmosphere there are expecting here, and various opportunities to work in the FCT, that’s the reason majority of people are relocating to Abuja, what are you expecting from the people relocating to Abuja? Some are new, some don’t have anything to do in Zamfara, they have anything to do in Kaduna or their state, they end up coming here, start begging or doing something else, in this regard through the agency for mass education.
“We establish a temporary shelter whereby those children, out of school children will be kept there, in the morning they may go looking for work for what they can do but in the afternoon they will there and attend classrooms, so this establishment of these temporary shelters will address the issue of out of school children, and not only the learning, they are learning both literacy and numeracy, they are learning skill acquisition because we establish skill acquisition centre in collaboration with mass education to depend on their selves.”
The secretary added that without the support from the minister some schools in Territory would collapse and children would stop attending school.
“In FCT, there are so many schools that need on the support intervention otherwise, maybe in few years, nobody will go that school, even the children will not be happy to learn in the environment, total dilapidation, so we decided to pick the schools that has serious dilapidation issues, so that we can start with it, and I’m very sure, out of the forty you can hear Bwari and other schools which I believe we can see it. This is the only criteria that we followed, the schools that has highest dilapidation.”
He assured that the contract for the rehabilitation of the schools would follow due process and that the minister would deliver on it.
“That is why a huge work is going to be done by the current administration. That is why the minister took education as a serious matter and earmarked about N30 billion.
“You see contract procurement procedures and definitely FCT is among Agency or governments that apply the use of procurement act, we are going to follow all the necessary procurement procedures, starting from adverts because of emergency situation, because the previous administration neglected education sector seriously with no kind of meaningful intervention in the previous administration in the education sector of the FCT, that’s why the huge work will be done by the present administration, I think that’s the main reason why the honourable minister took education as a serious matter, and spent about 30 billion naira.
“Believe me, the kind of minister we have now, is a man of principle and man of his words, whatever he says, he implements, on the spot he directed the minister of State to deduct from the source, he directed me to divide the outstanding payment into three months, for each area council, and I have done it and submitted it for approval, and he has approved it, after this approval, now from Joint Account Allocation Committee the minister of State will deduct and send it to the NUT account plus the 40 percent of the FCT intervention by the minister then to their various accounts.
“There is no way the area councils can deviate from payment of this outstanding payment then secondary the timeframe is May, each contractor must complete his project before May so that by May the honourable minister will be commissioning the new projects this 40 schools plus 18 whole school approach, then this four second batch of whole school approach to be commissioned in the month of May this year.“
