PONGMONI VS Pr  NALOVA LYONGA
Channel: Mainsah Gilbert
Date: 2022-12-02

ORAL QUESTION addressed to  THE MINISTER OF SECONDARY EDUCATION by Senator PONGMONI Jean Marie

Madam Minister,
Last year, following a working visit to the economic capital on 17 September 2021, you  decided to cap the PTA fees at (twenty-five thousand) 25 000 CFAF in our country’s public secondary schools and to immediately refund the “overpayment” so as to stop the several controversies that have arisen within the public opinion.

This decision was however received in different ways by different people. Thus, its supporters saw it as a salutary measure aimed at alleviating the sufferings of parents at a time of stagnation caused by the Russo-ukranian war. Nonetheless, some informed souls think that you have not sufficiently questioned the realities of our educational institutions before taking this decision in the sense that even though our high schools and colleges are certainly diverse and emerge from different environments, they are all faced with a crucial lack of infrastructures, insufficient staff and resources for proper functioning. To overcome these difficulties, they often resort to the assistance of the elite and most essentially to the contribution of parents through PTAs. 

On the strength of this, those with many students often undertake ambitious construction projects that require them to launch these contributions to provide their facilities with classrooms. This being the case, your decision has not failed to deliver some of these Principals (whose structures have buildings under construction) to jungle justice or to put them in conflict with service providers of the said projects, insofar as the latter hardly accept the revision of contracts proposed to them by the project managers, the PTAs.

In the aftermath, we cannot also deny that some clever minds take advantage of this situation to make fortune illegally.

This being the case, my concern henceforth is to know what emergency measures you have adopted so as to conclude these multiple construction projects that have remained unfinished on the one hand, and to provide our schools with a minimum of reception infrastructures on the other hand. If not, is it not appropriate that the State, through your interpersonal skills and the support of the Parliament, provides schools with special fund to enable them complete the works undertaken without jeopardizing their functional balance?

 Thank you Madam Minister.


                                      Senator PONGMONI Jean Marie