Paul Osuyi, Asaba

Delta State Governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa has approved a comprehensive infrastructural audit and mapping of all public primary and secondary schools in the state.

Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr. Patrick Ukah, who made this known at the weekend said the exercise has become imperative for government to have a deeper critical overview of its infrastructural inputs.

This, he said, is with a view to identifying shortfalls and possible gaps which would redirect its focus to untouched areas of infrastructural needs by the schools during the tenure of the present administration.

According to him, at the end of the audit and mapping project, critical challenges would be identified which will inform government policies and actions in addressing the issues of duplication of projects, skewness in project locations, poor school database management and documentation, and economic wastage.

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He explained that the exercise, which is expected to be completed within eight weeks, will throw up a number of issues and challenges of the system that may need to be tackled by the state government.

Ukah stated that the perceived gap is not due to inaction on the part of government but the large number of public schools and the long years of abandonment, adding that government in its commitment to promoting educational standards in the state, has extended the intervention beyond infrastructural developments with the recruitment of one thousand teachers recently.

He said given the large number of public schools in the state and the various other competing demands in the social sector of the economy, no one would rightly expect that all schools would be attended to simultaneously by government, adding that intervention programmes are executed in phases until the entire the state is covered.

The commissioner assured that the outcome and recommendations of the exercise would be made public as it will further provide policy directions for government towards achieving intended overall educational goals in the state.