Foundation offers to build modern toilets to save school from closure

A foundation has offered to construct toilets for Mumboha Primary School in Luanda constituency to save it from being closed.

Mbati Foundation announced on Tuesday it would build nine modern toilets for Sh1.5 million.

The school with a student population of over 1,000 had been served with a notice of closure by public health officials over sanitation.

It has four toilets for girls and three for boys and the available facilities are almost full.

“We will construct five toilets for girls and dour for boys. The boy's toilets will include urinals to optimise space,” said Haroun Mbati, the foundation chairman.

"When we talked to teachers they told us that they are encouraging pupils to use toilets in their homes before coming to school to reduce pressure on what is available," he said.

Speaking while launching the distribution of sanitary towels to schools in the constituency, Mbati said the facilities would be complete and ready in two months.

He said the foundation will distribute sanitary towels valued at Sh 1.1 million to 57 public schools in the Luanda constituency.

The programme is meant to help girls stay in schools during their menstrual circle and concentrate on their learning started last year.

“Female students face a lot of challenges during menstrual circle and some are forced to stay at home for fear of being embarrassed for lacking the pads. This is why we had to step in,” he said.

“When we did it the first time we realised that performance, especially by girl pupils rose and we want to build on that,” he said.

Mbati said that some sexual predators took advantage of the lack of sanitary towels to buy the girls some in exchange for sex, in most cases unprotected.

This he said results in early pregnancies that force the girls to drop out of school and Sexual Transmitted infections.