VietNamNet Bridge – Many schools in HCM City do not have playgrounds for their students.

The school consists of two adjacent houses, where there are 20 classrooms. The biggest classroom is 40 square metres large, the smallest just 20 square metres.

Students use the corridor and the space under corridor as a play area, because these are the only available spaces.

“I feel sorry for the students, who play in the corridor. But I cannot do anything for them,” offered Nguyen Trung Hai, Headmaster of Huynh Man Dat Primary School. “A lot of parents do not want to bring their children to our school, because it has no playground.”

Ly Thai To Primary School in District 8 of HCM City also faces the same problem. The school once had 1,000 students, but now has only 200, even though the school is in the city centre.

According to the school’s headmaster, Tran Van Giau, the school cannot use the first floor of the building because it was appropriated by the district’s people’s committee in 2000.

Giau said that the school building was formerly the Phi Long Theatre, popular in the 1960s, and therefore, it has seriously degraded.

Nguyen Thanh Tam, headmaster of Dinh Cong Trang Primary School in District 8, complained that his school cannot organize student festivals because of no playground. “They cannot even have a school opening ceremony,” he added.

Meanwhile, new school building projects remain on paper after many years.

Giau of Ly Thai To Primary School said that when he began working at Ly Thai To School in 1998, he heard that a building project had been put forward in 1995. However, there has been no new school, because there has been “no land fund.”

The project on building Huynh Man Dat School, which encompasses an area of 1,500 square metres with four floors and 30 classrooms, has also been dwelled on paper for ten years.

No progress has been seen with other projects like building Le Anh Xuan Secondary School in District 11 and Binh Loi Trung Primary School.

VietNamNet/TP