The Ministry of Education receives applications for investment in school real estate in need of restoration, in amounts that exceed two hundred million pounds

Damascus-Sana

The Ministry of Education has begun to receive requests from investors and owners of private educational institutions within the "Investment Project for Some School Real Estate" owned by the Ministry, which needs to be rehabilitated and restored in amounts exceeding 200 million Syrian pounds per school.

According to Haytham Badawi, director of the General Authority for Education Buildings in the Ministry of Education, the investment project for some school properties is based on investing a number of real estate damaged by terrorism or that the ministry cannot restore at the present time in order to secure resources in partnership with the private sector to advance educational facilities.

Badawi said that the project allows the investment of school properties that cannot be rehabilitated at the present time for a specific period, provided that they return after the end of the investment period with a good technical level to be used as a government school according to the purpose for which it was established, indicating that the Ministry has hundreds of properties in the governorates, most of which have been constructively destroyed as a result of the war. There are schools that have no educational benefit due to the changing population density in their area.

Badawi revealed that the ministry offered 5 projects in principle for investment, starting with damaged schools that must be rehabilitated at a certain cost after the ministry estimates the annual rent allowance for classrooms, which will be assessed by the relevant committees with the obligation of the investing party to accept 25 percent of students according to the compulsory education and to keep furniture. And equipment in schools at the end of the contract as a donation from the investor and his commitment to the periodic maintenance required of him so that the school is in good technical level at the time of delivery.

The investor can also invest courtyards and squares that are surplus to the school’s need to become grass playgrounds or squares, as well as school basements to be wedding halls or warehouses for safe materials in a manner that does not conflict with the educational process or gymnasiums and investing the roofs to establish solar panels on them and generate electric power and investment and school bags to be shops and libraries And others, according to Badawi.

The Director of Legal Affairs at the Public Authority for Education Buildings Mohiuddin Najeeb explained that the Contract Law No. 51 of 2004 allowed public entities to sell, lease or invest by mutual consent or direct means in order to obtain revenues for public agencies and organize this process, as well as selling, leasing or investing the real estate of public entities. According to a specific framework, stressing that there is a committee formed, headed by the Minister of State for Investment Affairs, that adopted the unified procedural guide for all educational real estate investment operations in the governorates.

The procedural guide aims to regulate the process and procedures for investing in educational real estate in accordance with the provisions of the contract law, whereby Naguib indicated that the education system in the invested schools follows during the contract period the Legislative Decree 55 of 2004 regulating the work of private and joint education in the Ministry of Education.

Rehab Ali