The general director of Educational Infrastructures of the Ministry of Education, Víctor Garcia, has visited Orihuela to look at the progress of the works of the Edificant plan in the municipality, which are paid for with economic funds from the Consell but managed by the Orihuela council
Garcia paid a visit to the Thader IES, the Virgen de la Puerta CEIP, the School of Art and Design (EASD) and the Los Dolses CEIP, accompanied by members of the local council.
Garcia explained that the plan is “to expand the investment of almost 20 million euro”, for the improvement of the Oriolano educational centres with the construction of a new school on the Orihuela Costa, which would be built on a municipal plot of land next to CEIP Los Dolses”.
“This new school would mean an investment of between 5 and 7 million euro more by the Department, which would allow us to decongest the CEIP Los Dolses and improve educational care in an area of growing expansion on the Orihuela coast”, according to Garcia.
During the visit to the Virgen de la Puerta CEIP, Garcia said that “the Department will study increasing the allocation of funds for the action that was already planned in this school while rethinking the action to demolish the facilities and build a new one on the same plot”.
Orihuela is the municipality to which the Department of Education has awarded more funds for the construction and improvement of educational infrastructures throughout the Valencian Community: a total of 21 measures.
Of these 21 actions, 13 are already completed, another 3 are under construction, 4 are in the process of works by the council, while one of them is in the final phase of awarding funds via Edificant. The latter is the complete refurbishment of the Orihuela EASD, a project that already has 4.3 million euro guaranteed by the department. However, the Director General of Infrastructures has said that “the restoration of the EASD will exceed 5 million euro once the update of the financial report is completed”.
Garcia has underlined “the total commitment of the Ministry with the modernisation of the educational infrastructures of Orihuela”. He has also thanked the Orihuela City Council for collaboration in improving the city’s educational centres and he has always been willing to study the requests that may be generated from the town hall.
To the 18.2 million euro of investment in Edificant, another 1.3 million must be added in two works that the Ministry itself will undertake this summer in Orihuela: the removal of fibre cement and replacement of the roof of the EADS in Orihuela, a project that has already gone out to public tender for more than half a million euro; and the investment of 700,000 euro in various improvement works at CEIP Los Dolses, which will be put out to tender shortly.
This last scheme, the general director has detailed, “will allow us to definitively solve the discrepancies that have existed for years around the wall separating the school with an adjoining urbanisation.
The department will to put an end to the problem, and voluntarily set back the line dividing about 15 cm within the school plot to be able to build a 4-metre-high wall with which to guarantee the privacy of the students, their sports courts, the kitchen, the façade and the fence of the centre”.
