Daily wading in the ankle-deep streams, will soon be a thing of the past for students of Nukuloa village, who attend Lutu District School in Naitasiri, as the Education Ministry will work with the school in formally registering their hostel facilities.
Students from Nukuloa have to walk a total distance of 4 kilometres to reach the school.
The Permanent Secretary for Education, Mr Filipe Jitoko, while officiating at the opening of a new staff quarters for the school on Thursday last week, confirmed to the staff, students and the Lutu community, that discussions into the facilitation of recognizing their hostel facilities will now be ongoing so that students could be housed properly as soon as possible.
At present, they have a hostel which accommodates both boys and girls and due to limited space, the hostel could only accommodate 14 students. The school was informed that there should be separate facilities for girls and boys.
The rest of the students continue to travel daily from Nukuloa to school. Thus, this is the reason why the Ministry decided to assist the school.
The Ministry hopes that becoming a boarding school will provide the much-needed comfort for staff and 126 students of Lutu District School, especially, the students of Nukuloa village.
The Ministry will continue to look into means of helping students in such situation to alleviate the difficulties they face in attending school daily.
Filipe Bole
Minister for Education, National Heritage, Culture and Arts, Youth and Sports, Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment.