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(MENAFN - Arab News) Education Minister Prince Faisal bin Abdullah has signed a SR2 billion contract with China Railway-15 Bureau Group for the construction of 200 school buildings in various cities of the Kingdom. The Chinese company won the contract in competition with several global construction companies, the Saudi Press Agency reported Saturday.
"The new school buildings with a total capacity of 150,000 will be operational months after the date of the signing of the contract," Deputy Minister of Education Faisal bin Muammar said Saturday after a meeting with the officials of the Chinese company in his office. The contract period has been fixed at 14 months.
Muammar said the contract represented 6 percent of 3,500 projects currently being implemented by the Ministry of Education at a total cost of SR20 billion. When completed, the schools will have a capacity of 1,700,000 students of both sexes. He said his ministry takes over an average of 80 new schools a month.
"The present contract is in line with a royal directive to speed up the implementation of educational projects with the help of international expertise," Muammar said in a statement.
"The Ministry of Education is currently undertaking a comprehensive and ambitious project to develop the educational system in the Kingdom based on the realization that the real investment should be in the sons and daughters of the nation because they will be the main pillars of the nation in future," the deputy minister said.
He added: "The project, which keeps pace with the King Abdullah Project for the Development of General Education, will follow international specifications for school buildings to provide students the most advanced environments for learning."
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah allocated SR9 billion for a general education development project, which was named the King Abdullah Project for the Development of General Education. The allocations included SR4 billion to improve the educational environment and SR3.58 billion for extra-curricular activities.
King Abdullah also allocated large amounts of money from a budget surplus to construct new schools as part of projects to overhaul the Kingdom's educational system in order to cope with global developments in the field.
King Abdullah's project also included SR2.94 billion for the training and development of teachers.
The deputy minister said the construction of school buildings was delayed on several occasions in the past because contracts were given to individual national companies. There were also occasions when a contract had to be canceled because of the contractor's inability to complete the work on time. In order to avoid such problems, the ministry would award contracts collectively, he said.
"Awarding the contracts in the present way enables the ministry to supervise the projects in a professional and thorough manner," the deputy minister added.
Chinese Ambassador Yang Honglin, who was present at the contract signing ceremony, said the project comes under a memorandum of understanding signed between the two countries in 2008.
By Mohammed Rasooldeen
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