The school community of Risaralda that cries out for a new headquarters - Other Cities - Colombia

The educational community of the educational institution Nuestra Señora de La Presentation, in La Virginia, Risaralda, has been waiting for more than a decade to have its own school.

Several officials on duty have promised them a new venue, but so far more than 550 preschool and elementary school children are crowded into two prefabricated classrooms that were bought by parents and a venue rented from the local church.

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“Children don’t have access to computers, we keep them in suitcases, they eat snacks on the floor, we don’t have dining rooms, no kitchen, no library, nothing. We only have a building full of weeds and bats”, said the rector of the institution, Miriam Zapata.

The situation has reached such a point that students and parents decided to protest and block the La Virginia-Caldas-Antioquia highway.

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Although this school dates back to 1960, it only had its own headquarters until 2012, when 12 classrooms were built on a property purchased by the Risaralda Government. Despite the fact that they had been promised 15 classrooms, the institution’s directors accommodated some 550 high school students in these rooms, but phase two of the project was missing, which involved another 550 preschool and primary students, who are the ones who are overcrowded in two rooms.

Although a part of the infrastructure was built, for almost three years it was suspended and is abandoned.

“These classrooms are deteriorated. The walls and the beams are fractured, there is a module that leaned on the other. A few months ago the contractor came, repaired everything and delivered, but it has already cracked again. They say that they will not demolish and that the inclined part is already that way, but who is going to receive that,” added Zapata.

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The Secretary of Education of Risaralda, Leonardo Gómez, told EL TIEMPO that he agreed with the community’s discomfort. “It is a mega-school contracted in 2015 and that has not complied and does not even have financial closure. Other schools in La Virginia did advance but La Presentation did not, it is our question to the Ministry”, he added.

And he added that the Ministry informed them that on Monday they will have a financial committee to finally make the financial closure of this project. “We expect good news for Risaraldenses,” he concluded.

About Jose Alexis Correa Valencia

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