Assistance from the government of Japan is supporting the building of 60 classrooms in North and Far North .
Some 60 new classrooms under construction in 30 primary schools in the North and Far North Regions will be handed over to government early November 2013. The classrooms are gifts from the Japanese government under its Build-Back-Better-Schools initiative which is funded from the FCFA 7 billion Emergency Support Package provided to Cameroon following the September 2012 floods.
The floods left almost 91,000 people displaced, 170 schools damaged and nearly 62,000 school-going children affected. Some 60 gender-sensitive blocks of latrine and 60 wells are also under construction in 60 schools for some 27,000 school children. On Saturday, October 12, 2013, workers were busy in the village of Zokok-Laddeo, Maroua I Subdivision in Diamare Division of the Far North Region. They were working hard to complete the foundation of a block of two classrooms. Nearby, stood a 70 per cent complete well.
Like in other construction sites in the Far North, officials of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, are supervising the work carried out by Plan Cameroon, in charge of building classrooms, and the Netherlands Development Organisation, SNV, in charge of building latrines and wells. According to the construction company's worksite supervisor, Mohaman Dantini, the school building will be completed by end of October 2013. The new school site which was chosen on government land is situated 1.5 km from the old site where three out of five classrooms were swept away on September 3, 2012 by swelling waters from the nearby River Kaliao.
According to the school's Head Teacher, Jean Pierre Pahimi, the entire village looks forward to the construction with hope and gratitude. "We have built a makeshift structure with six compartments that serve as classrooms for 734 pupils," he explained. Besides rebuilding schools devastated by floods, the Japanese 2013 Emergency Support Package for Cameroon also covers the nutritional needs of over 58,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in the East and three northern regions.
UNICEF is executing the different projects in the domains of education, nutrition, health and sanitation. It works in partnership with the ministries in charge of Public Health, Basic Education, Water Resources and Energy as well as the World Food Programme, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Population Fund and local NGOs.
