Kinshasa, April 28th, 2025 (CPA) – Modern latrines and a standpipe were inaugurated on Saturday at a ceremony organized at the Maï-Ndombe primary school in Matete, a commune in the Centre of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, as part of the ‘Safe and clean environment for children’ project. ‘We inaugurated these structures, designed by the DRC Red Cross and financed by the Swedish Red Cross, to provide a pleasant living environment for the children attending this school’, said Grégoire Mateso, national president of this humanitarian movement in the DRC. According to Mr Mateso, this is a joint project to provide the beneficiary children with a ‘healthy and safe’ environment so that they can grow up normally and their survival is guaranteed. ‘Today, we have come to inaugurate a project that we have to give to children. We have a mixed project that we carried out first in Kisenso and today we have just finished with Matete’, said Dr Marceline Katshingu, head of the project. ‘The project has made drinking water available in the various schools targeted by the project by building a standpipe at each site. For hand-washing, the project has provided each school with a set of hand-washing kits with soap, and for the maintenance of various infrastructures, three water tanks have also been provided to the schools’, she added.
Taking the floor, Julien Nkuyi, President of the Red Cross Society of Kinshasa, expressed his gratitude to the project’s financial partner, the Swedish Red Cross, for providing the schools in the Congolese capital with good quality infrastructure, and to the beneficiaries for making good use of it.
Ms Paloma Diaz de Durana, country representative for the Swedish Red Cross, expressed her commitment to continuing her work in the DRC, particularly in Kinshasa. She explained that her intervention was part of the ‘Disaster Risk Reduction Project’ to help communities, particularly those in the municipalities of Kisenso and Matete. For his part, Mr Mutangayi Ngweme, deputy director of the Matete 1 education province, expressed his gratitude to the Red Cross for this gesture of great humanitarian importance, before demanding that all measures be taken to ensure responsible management of these structures. The work, which will run from September, 23rd, 2024 to March 23rd, 2025, was carried out by the Makuba Company.