Taxpayers forked out €200,000 to a construction company so that the Education Ministry could buy 12 makeshift classrooms for St Paul’s Bay primary school.

New information released in Parliament shows that the mobile classrooms have been in place for the past three scholastic years and were bought without a tender from BAVA Holdings Ltd – a construction company which normally uses similar structures to serve as offices on construction sites.

Education Minister Evarist Bartolo, who justified the use of the classrooms as a temporary solution due to the sudden influx of the population at St Paul’s Bay, mostly migrants, said that in 2016 the government agency responsible for school building, the FTS, did not issue a tender but used a quotation system to procure these classrooms.

New school will be fully functional by September

Since the cost was substantial, the approval of this procurement exercise needed the green-light from the Finance Ministry.

A few weeks ago, the Times of Malta revealed new plans by the Education Ministry to install more mobile classrooms at St Paul’s Bay primary despite that a new school promised for the area should be fully functional by this September.

According to a fresh call for tenders, issued by the Foundation for Tomorrow Schools, the government is now planning to install more mobile classrooms at St Paul’s Bay and to introduce them for the first time at Żejtun’s secondary school.

Despite the invitation for tenders, the Education Ministry explained that it had no plans to put more mobile classrooms inside St Paul’s Bay primary as the new school, being built in Qawra, will be fully functional by September.

The new school is already two years behind schedule.

As for the mobile classrooms in Żejtun, the ministry said these will only be used for a short period until new facilities will be built at the secondary school.

The FTS had to build and complete a new storey with extra classes on top of the school’s existing building. However, even in this case, works are not moving according to plan.

Mr Bartolo described the mobile classrooms as “state-of-the-art” and “better than some current classrooms in government schools”.

According to the FTS, the new tender was required to replace some of the current mobile classrooms at St Paul’s Bay primary.

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