By: Godwin Abedican

Arua
The government of Uganda through the Ministry of Education and Sports is funding the construction of two classroom blocks at St. Aloysius collage Nyapea, in Zombo District. The project meant to restructure part of the school is funded by World bank and is expected to cost a total of 308 million Ugandan shillings.  This project comes as one rare opportunity for the once powerful government school in the region of West Nile in the northern part of the country.
The school has since the early 2000s seen a serious decline in standards caused by dilapidated structures which has affected the enrollment and outcome of National Examination results at the school. This project comes as a government effort together with the old boys (former students) of the school who are trying to revamp academic levels of the school. The project contracted to Rhema Engineering Company, will see 2 blocks of two rooms and 3 rooms constructed within a period of 4 months.

According to Ecoku Sanctus the lead engineer for the project from Rhema Engineering Company, they will ensure that they beat the project deadline and work within the required standards. “We had a small challenge of delay in signing the project contract which is not our fault but of the contract committee which made starting the work to delay for a while, but since the work has already started all will be achieved within the scheduled time period he said says they will work as per the terms of the contact” Ecoku said.

Brother. Paul Nantinda the head teacher of St. Aloysius collage Nyapea says the new structures will help address classroom challenges and give the school a better look. He added that, this will help to attract more students and positively affect their performance since the school has not been performing well of late.
Being the chief monitor of government projects, the resident district commissioner of Zombo district, Lt. Col. Pius Alitema, warned against shoddy work and says execution of government projects need to be done properly since tax payers’ monies are used. “As I ensure the security of everybody and making sure peace reigns in the district, monitoring government projects in the district is also my responsibility and this project happens to be one of them. I will ensure that I follow closely with them and give timely report as well as always reminding the ministry on the state of the project” Alitema said. “If our structures look poor then parents cannot send their children here.” He added

St. Alysious College Nyapea is a single secondary school for boys founded in 1938 in Gulu before being relocated to Nyapea in the current district of Zombo in the early years of its establishment boasted of being one of the country’s iconic schools producing great academicians with the population of the school usually very high to over one thousand students those years. This has since vanished and currently the school has a population of only around 280 students. The last time the government tried to support the school was during the 2011 and 2012 financial year when the monies allocated for the renovation of the school were allegedly swindled and the project stalled with no value for money realized, whose investigations through the office of the president just went silent.