There were scenes of celebrations, dances and ululation on Wednesday afternoon in Group Village Chapola Traditional Authority Onga in Chiradzulu District when Airtel Malawi handed over two school blocks and toilets to Nkuyu Junior Primary School.
Coordinator for Primary Education Advisors (CPEA) for Chiradzulu District, Redge Opanikufa, hailed Airtel Malawi for what he described as ‘timely projects’.
He said, learners had to travel long distances to enroll for standard five somewhere since the school had standard 1 to 4 due to lack of learning infrastructures.
“The shortest distance is over 3 kilometres and that’s an unreasonable distance to any child. Airtel’s corporate social responsibility is timely, the learners will attend school here without taking such long distances,” said Opanikufa adding that with the new blocks, the school now has classes from 1 to 8.
In his remarks, Managing Director for Airtel Malawi, Charles Kamoto, said the company heard of the challenges children were facing in the area and decided to bring a solution.
“The responsibility of constructing school blocks belongs to the government. However, we come in to complement the government’s efforts. We feel excited to have solved this problem and we expect that the district education office will provide teachers for standard five up to eight,” said Kamoto
Nkuyu Junior Primary School currently has a total enrollment of 370 learners with seven teachers.
Apart from the two school blocks, Airtel has also constructed sanitary facilities for girls and boys at the institution.
