By Demilade Adeniyi
A block of 10 classrooms built at Amuwo-Odofin Junior High School, by the the Ports and Terminal Multiservices Limited (PTML), will tomorrow be handed over to the Lagos State Government, the Managing Director Mr Ascanio Russo has said.
Speaking while addressing select journalists at the PTML Headquarters at Apapa on Monday, Russo said the school project is part of the company’s contributions to improving the learning environment for students and their teachers.
PTML is the owner of the largest Roll-On-Roll Off (RORO) Terminal in West Africa and the operator of Nigeria’s oldest port concessionaire, operating in the nation’s busiest port, Apapa, in the last 50 years.
Russo lauded the Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu for believing in the project and for supporting PTML in its desire to impact on it’s host community as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility.
According to him, the School which is its closest neighbour was a water-logged and mashy area that used to be home to hoodlums and street urchins and a place many parents feared to enroll their wards. He said though the company has had a long standing relationship with the school and had been sponsoring many of their events in the past, it decided to take its intervention in the school higher in 2020 when it proposed to the state government it’s interest to construct a storey building housing 10 classrooms, a fully equipped staff room.
The school, he said, is equipped with an ICT laboratory, furnished with computers and assessories, a standby 500kva generator, a 500 metre-long access road, 1000 desks and chairs for the school and other schools within the neighbourhood, world class drainage system to deflood the school as well as other school infrastructure and a borehole and water treatment plant to purify the water.
He said PTML’s choice of targeting the school for the facelift is borne out of Grimaldi Group, owners of PTML’s, commitment to long term partnership with the Nigerian government both at the Federal or the State level and contributing to the overall well-being of it’s host community and especially to be involved in the development of requisite manpower some of who may choose to work for the company in the coming years.