Jerusalem City Hall received approval from the Interior Ministry for a loan in the amount of NIS 630 million to build badly-needed classrooms in the city.

Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat said, “On behalf of the Jerusalem students, I would like to thank Interior Minister Aryeh Deri for his steadfastness with the students of Jerusalem and for the important and close partnership with the municipality, thanks to which the Jerusalem students will receive proper classrooms, the plan to construct 5,000 classrooms with an investment of NIS 9 billion, which will reduce the unimaginable and intolerable gaps of 100,000 students in the capital of Israel who do not have standard classrooms.

“This is the beginning of a historic process to rectify the injustice of decades and I hope that the state will join us and allocate the necessary budgets for change and to rectify the injustices of decades, in order to give every student in Jerusalem the best conditions to learn and succeed.”

Last week, the Jerusalem Municipality received the approval of the Ministry of the Interior for a loan of NIS 630 million for the construction of thousands of new classrooms in Jerusalem, in all sectors. This sum joins a loan that was approved and taken at the beginning of 2018 in the amount of NIS 370 million and completes a total loan of NIS 1 billion that the municipality took to build classrooms.

“The NIS 1 billion loan taken by the municipality allows the planning and construction of 2,000 new classrooms in all sectors of the city, NIS 370 million already taken at the beginning of the year, allowing the municipality to start building 474 new classrooms and planning 1,100 new classrooms. The NIS 630 million approved will permit completion of planning and construction of some 2,000 classrooms for all sectors of the city.

The municipality emphasized that despite the billion-dollar loan, 5,000 classrooms will be missing in Jerusalem over the next five years for 100,000 students. The Jerusalem Municipality carried out unprecedented work as never before and formulated a five-year plan to reduce gaps and build 5,000 new classrooms in Jerusalem over the next five years.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)