Photo: Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
The final report handed to the Minister of Education, Hon. Francis Fonseca, has estimated that it will cost approximately $3 million to repair the damaged school buildings.
BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Dec. 15, 2022
The Ministry of Education has arrived at a final estimate of the number of schools that were damaged in some way by Hurricane Lisa. According to a final report handed to Minister of Education, Hon. Francis Fonseca, that number is 77—and it encompasses schools that received varying degrees of damage, with one school building even losing its entire roof. Some funds for repairs (a few hundred thousand dollars) have been allocated within the Ministry’s budget, and that amount has been augmented by what has been contributed to the cause by members of the community, but according to the Ministry’s estimates, a total of $3 million will be needed to carry out all the necessary repairs at institutions across the country.
The school that received the most extensive damage as a result of the storm is Belize Rural Primary, where the entire roof of one of the school buildings was lost. Most of the other institutions have sustained medium to low-level damage, Minister Fonseca says.
“The estimate overall is about three million dollars worth of damage. We’ve put that, that assessment has been given over to the Office of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but we have not waited, obviously, for those monies to come in. We have been working with various partners, so we’ve gotten support from different entities in Belize. We’ve gotten some donations, plus in our own budget we have a few hundred thousand dollars that we have allocated to addressing some of the more urgent needs,” Fonseca said.
He went on to say that the closing of schools for the Christmas holiday has been identified as the ideal opportunity to carry out the necessary repairs so that the school facilities are in an improved condition for the January school year. While there has been significant damage at some schools, all schools have been able to resume classes to complete this current term.
“There are issues that we have to deal with over the next few weeks to get those schools back up and running for January,” Minister Fonseca said.