The
CRDB Managing Director, Dr Charles Kimei, said in Dar es Salaam on
Tuesday that the bank has provided 275m/- to 62 councils and
municipalities and 100m/- to Dar es Salaam Region which has a big number
of students without desks.
Speaking
at an event to hand over to Dar RC with a dummy cheque of 100m/-, Dr
Kimei said the councils and municipalities that received the donation
are those which bank with CRDB. He said under the bank corporate social
responsibility, they put more weight on supporting education sector for
the well-being of the nation.
“For
our nation to make another step forward in development, we have to
invest heavily on improving education policy and infrastructure,” Dr
Kimei said.
The
MD said the bank fully backed the RC’s effort on solving school desks
crisis for primary and secondary schools. Dr Kimei, personally, donated
1.0m/- for the desks fund that the bank has created in a bid to solicit
donations from various stakeholders countrywide.
The
fund account was opened at CRDB Kijitonyama branch and receives
donation from any contributors but the money would be channelled to the
respective council or municipalities of donor’s transaction domicile.
“If
one send money from, say, Njombe then the contribution will be
channelled to Njombe (town council),” Dr Kimei said while directing CRDB
managers to put donation boxes on each branch to facilitate collection
for desks.
Mr
Makonda said the CRDB gesture showed that the campaign to end school
desk shortage was possible. He appealed to other financial institutions
and businesses to emulate the bank in contributing towards easing desk
shortage problem. “CRDB shows us it is possible… and it can be done,” Mr
Makonda said while thanking the bank for the assistance.
The
100m/-, which CRDB donated, are enough to enable 4,500 students who
were sitting on the ground to have desks or equivalents to procure over
1,000 desks for primary schools.
“The
problem is that desk prices have gone up from 55,000/- when the
campaign started to over 100,000/-…. actually some suppliers are
demanding 200,000 /- for a desk,” he said noting that some people were
using loopholes in procurement law to inflate the prices of desks.
“This procurement law if I had power I could have immediately annulled it,” the youth RC said.
Download Video and Put Comment
Toa Maoni Hapa Chini
