The Ministry of Education is ready to turn the page of the scholastic year 2021-2022, with the end of the second round exams and the announcement of the results late this week, terminating all measures that were taken as a result of the new corona pandemic, said the next school year, will be a real challenge for it, in light of the comprehensive program for students after three years of different systems adopted by the ministry in light of the state’s measures to combat and confront the virus, reports Al-Rai daily.

With the decision of the comprehensive return to school decided, and the desire of the Ministry of Education to intensify its efforts to prepare early for the summer vacation, in order to avoid all the problems that prompted it to postpone the return, the educational facilities sector has begun all preparations by organizing work and air conditioning units in all schools for four months of maintenance. An engineering source told the daily maintenance work began last November, stressing that “the air-conditioning system needs a complete replacement in old schools whose age has exceeded 15 years, and it amounts to about 60 percent of schools, especially in Al- Firdous areas, old Farwaniya, Andalusia, Sulaibikhat, Doha and most of the old areas in Kuwait.

The source stressed that carrying out maintenance of these units is useless and said replacing these machines is much better and more economical than maintaining them, because all maintenance work for them is considered temporary patchwork solutions to no avail. He said that “during the past two months, the finishing work was carried out in most of the air-conditioning units, and what is necessary was done in terms of maintenance making sure that the units are clean and how much they need gas and whether they work well or not.” He stressed that “thousands of units have been filled with gas, and the presence of leakage in many of them is normal.” He stated that the air-conditioning contract is in effect in all educational areas, but here comes the role of the engineer supervising the company’s work. We go around the schools one after the other, to make sure that the necessary action is taken then we write our reports to the facilities sector.

There are no problems in schools whose construction age ranges between 10 to 15 years, as the condition of the air conditioning is usually very good, and some of them may need to replace parts and others compressors and then we operate them to ensure according to a gradual plan.” Meanwhile, the air-conditioning maintenance contracts in all educational areas will expire by May 2023, while Assistant Undersecretary for Financial Affairs Youssef Al-Najjar told Al-Rai that there is a circular notifying the financial sector regarding any contract that will expire, in order to complete the extension procedures before the expiry date. In other news, the Ministry of Education confirmed about 1,200 job positions have been filled with non-Kuwaiti teachers in the required academic disciplines for the next academic year 2022-2023, as it opened the door for local contracting since last month, while the required numbers will be met through the external contracting committees which visited Jordan and Palestine.