The Ministry of Education, Arts, and Culture will kick off this month with the second phase of its emergency classroom construction.

The Minister of Education, Arts, and Culture, Anna Nghipondoka, says the ministry will commence this month with the construction of another 500 classrooms across the country.

The ministry last year constructed 510 classrooms. 

The emergency construction of classrooms is part of the ministry's accelerated infrastructure development plan geared towards addressing the shortage of classrooms at lower primary.

"We are going into phase two of public-to-public procurement, where we don't have to go through a lot of tender procedures. You do emergency construction and build classrooms. Come mid-February, we are going to start running another 500 classrooms through August 26."

The minister made the remarks during her familiarisation visit to some of the schools constructed in the Oshana Region on Wednesday.

Nghipondoka says she is doing an on-the-ground progress assessment of the completion of the emergency classrooms, which were constructed in 2023.

She emphasised that the aim of the emergency project is to address shortages of classrooms and to ensure that children who are of school-going age are in school.

"We want to confirm to the nation that all these classrooms, except where we have issues like this one with electricity and sewerage ponds to be cleared, have recorded 100 to 99 success rates."