At Liwonde LEA School in Machinga District, a number of the classes are conducted in makeshift structures that have big cracks and are patched up in some places to hold the walls together.
The structures are, in effect, a disaster waiting to fall on children one day.
Those crumbling makeshift classrooms come in the context of general inadequacy of classrooms at the school. The school has 8 classrooms against a population of over 2,000 leaners.
This situation is stretching teachers and making parents anxious. But if promises were met, those children would have been learning in decent and secure classrooms now.
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Liwonde LEA School which is under St Theresa Zone in Traditional Authority Sitola was founded in February 2001.
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In 2019, officials from the District Education Office and Malawi Fertiliser Company which is located in the town visited the school and promised to construct blocks for eight classrooms.
In 2022, the Ministry of Education also promised to construct a school block through Malawi Education Reform Project (Merp).
The block was supposed to be in use starting this 2023-2024 academic year.
Today, there are no additional classrooms and there is no new school block as promised by the fertiliser company and the government.
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The communities, led by Dailesi Gama, Chairperson for Parents Teacher Association at the school, are angry that those promises were just lies.
“When we talk of infrastructure at this school, it is a big challenge. Our children and teachers here are suffering.
“We were happy when Malawi Fertilizer Company promised to give us classrooms here but to our surprise four years have gone since their promise. We tried to do follow ups together with our traditional leaders but we haven’t gotten any tangible response since,” he said.
When we contacted District Chief Education Officer, Douglas Namikungulu.
He asked for more time before commenting on the matter while authorities from Malawi Fertilizer Company were not available for a comment.
Mphatso Nkuonera, spokesperson in the Ministry of Education, said the ministry is aware of the challenges at the school.
He said the ministry is yet to find out from the Malawi Fertilizer Company through the District Council as to why the promise has not been met.
For the ministry’s Merp project, he said construction works will start in November 2023 instead.
As they wait for promises that haven’t been met thus far, learners in junior classes at the school have to make do with the makeshift classrooms which their parents constructed in 2016.
The structures are just sheds which can’t protect the children during stormy weather or rains. They are also in bad shape now, their walls split in some places by deep cracks.
Ameena Likoma, who has a child at the school, fears that the school might lose learners one day if the school continues to rely on the improvised structures.
“We live in fear that someday, something bad will happen to our children. These makeshift classes are now a deathtrap to our teachers and children.
“Sometimes we think of demolishing them but then the hot conditions here in Liwonde come to mind. We feel it will not be good for our children to be learning under the sun,” Likoma said.
This is one problem within a bigger one of infrastructure shortage at the school.
A teacher at the school [name withheld] said this condition of the infrastructure is affecting their work.
As the numbers of pupils rise, authorities at the school have had to extend teaching time and split the classes.
