The Education Ministry is studying the feasibility of building new classrooms for kindergarten students in Battambang’s O’Char commune, where 103 students are currently being taught outdoors, an official said yesterday.

Provincial education department director Ngy Set said there was a meeting yesterday morning with officials from the ministry’s construction department, and it was determined that construction for the new kindergarten would begin later this year, though an exact location was still unknown. A previous kindergarten for the area has long been too dilapidated to use.

“We are studying . . . about the location . . . and whether to build it on the same land as the [Hun Sen O’Char Primary School],” he said. That school’s grounds is where the students are now being taught outdoors.

Commune kindergarten principle Peng Savry said the primary school is about 200 metres away from where the old kindergarten campus used to operate.

“The building deteriorated,” she said, adding her requests for a new building had gone unanswered. Ministry of Education spokesman Ros Salin said he wasn’t able to provide details.